


honeymoon

by humvee



Series: and then you [3]
Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-06 10:41:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6750634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/humvee/pseuds/humvee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s startling to see something so familiar look so foreign, here in California: it’s a DC metro card, with lime green text and two pandas eating bamboo on the front. The faded numbers in a printed column on the left read <i>01 75 - 01 85 - 01 85 - 02 15</i>, and Nate recognizes some of them: Foggy Bottom to Arlington, Foggy Bottom to Navy Yard and back, Chinatown. It takes Nate a few seconds to make out the scrawl on the reverse: capital letters spell out NATE, and underneath that, DECEMBER 05.</p>
            </blockquote>





	honeymoon

**Author's Note:**

> It's finally finished! Thank you all for sticking with this over the years (!). As always, I greatly appreciate all of your comments and support.

January finds Nate screwing around on the new Google Earth, clicking through the snow-covered walkways of Arlington National Cemetery and somehow getting his cursor stuck looking up at the top of the USS Maine Mast. Distantly, he’s pretty sure he’s hungry, but leaving the portable heater that stands beneath his desk seems like too much effort. His phone rings.

It’s not the company intercom. The apprehension subsides when he makes out the area code.

“Fick.”

“Are we getting lunch or did you forget?” says Rick. There’s weird shuffling on the line. “Excuse me, ma’am. Sorry. Christ, _move_.”

Jesus. “No, didn’t forget,” Nate lies quickly, shouldering the phone and shoving an arm through a sleeve. “Where are you?”

“There’s some sale on 14th, people are fucking hitting me with their bags. I’ll be at your building in a few, I’ll just come up.”

“I’m not allowed visitors,” says Nate, and then considers it. “Actually, no one even discussed the possibility.”

There’s more muffled shoving over the line.

“Fuck it,” Nate decides. “I’ll buzz you in. Or come get you.”

“Can I not just get in? Jesus. Where do you work? The CIA? I’ll just say I have a meeting with you.”

“I’ll get you,” says Nate, pulling on his coat. “There’s no one I’d have meetings with.”

 

They end up in the stairwell of Nate’s building, cold blowing through the latticework in place of a window.

“Why?” asks Rick, hooking his finger through the grid and looking down at the streets below.

“So people don’t throw themselves off the fourteenth floor,” says Nate, opening his thermos.

Rick turns around. “No, why are _we_ even here in the first place? Are you going to throw yourself off?”

Nate snorts. “Hardly. It’s just so goddamn stuffy in there, and the line for Panera was out the door last time I checked.”

“Yeah, but it’s fucking freezing up here.”

“Nice view, though,” says Nate. He comes up behind Rick and watches a truck clear snow along the perimeter of Franklin Square.

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” says Rick, leaning against the wall. “The beautiful vista of K Street is not worth fourteen flights of stairs. Your soldier ass can take it, mine can’t.”

“Marine,” Nate corrects automatically, and turns away from the grille. “I had this nightmare that I had to run a PT test and couldn’t. I woke up sweating and panting.”

“Tough,” says Rick, unsympathetic.

“Have to get back in shape somehow,” says Nate, slurping cereal. “I work in the tallest building in the city, might as well get something out of it.”

Rick looks at him. “Did I just watch you pour steaming milk into your cornflakes?”

“This is muesli,” says Nate. “Don’t ask. My sister swears by it.”

“Whatever, man,” says Rick. “If _you’re_ out of shape, I don’t know about the rest of us.”

“I ate a bag of Cheez-Its intended for a family last night,” Nate confesses. The five cigarettes left in the stale pack of Parliaments he found in an old coat and finished off probably didn’t help either. He elects not to tell Rick about that.

“How’s that girlfriend?” asks Rick. “Is this for her? She tell you to lose weight?”

“What girlfriend?”

“The one you were so hung up on,” says Rick, picking at his salad. “Fuck the New Year, I’m going to get a burger.”

“What?” asks Nate. “When?”

“Now.”

“No,” says Nate, “the girlfriend.”

“When we were in France.”

Jesus Christ. “That wasn’t my girlfriend,” Nate says.

“She’s not your girlfriend?” is Rick’s skeptical answer. “Sure, buddy.”

Nate doesn’t argue, and eats his cereal.

: : :

The PT dreams don’t stop, but don’t necessarily flare into any alarmingly steady recurrence, either; now they’re just some odd farrago of selected moments from his life, with Brad inserted in them. The one last night was the two of them at boot camp—whether it was Brad’s time or Nate’s, it was impossible to tell—and Brad’s face has suddenly replaced that of Nate’s Crucible partner’s. “Sir,” Brad is asking him, urgency in his voice, and what follows is the actual question, but Nate can’t make it out, no matter how many times Brad asks. Brad is getting frustrated, but Nate is still uncomprehending; it’s dark and raining, kind of like his Crucible, and there are flashes of light—from the flashlights, he knows, not lightning. All he can say is, “I don’t know.” Every time he tries to ask, “What?” his mouth opens and he hears himself saying, “I don’t know.” Nate knows, even in the dream, that it’s some reference to some conversation they’ve had before, but the references are all scrambled in his head. When he wakes up, he has to stare at the microfissures in the ceiling before the frustration and disgust abates. The thought that it’s just his subconscious—ordinarily comforting, that it’s a natural reaction that he’d dream about a presence in his life—only infuriates Nate: another thing in his life that’s out of his control.

In his waking life, though, it’s 5:14, and he considers running. He hasn’t done that in a while; it could be good. Maybe it would put an end to the dreams—at least the element in them that is, presumably, isolated around PT anxiety. He spends the hour he could have been running lying in bed, considering this some more, and finally heaves himself up before his alarm goes off.

 

He takes an early lunch to avoid the mass exodus in and out of the building at twelve, thinking about getting the work he needs to finish during the lunch hour, when it’s quiet. The new year’s snow had stopped briefly and left ankle-deep slush and a weird, unseasonal light rain. By reflex, Nate ducks into the subway entrance before the water drips down beyond his collar.

He finds himself at the top of the escalators of the Navy Yard station, and once he’s there, there’s nothing to do but walk towards the water.

The Anacostia is still dirty, slick from the shipyard swirling around in oily, snaking patterns on the water. The muddy slush makes it seem dirtier, snow is no longer uncleared and pristine. There’s movement to his right, where it hadn’t been only months prior. Several men in dress shoes and suits are sniffing around the dirt enclosure, walking gingerly beyond the chainlink fence onto tilled dirt. In front of the temporary trailer is a sign that reads: FUTURE HOME OF THE WASHINGTON NATIONALS. Old snow drips from it.

Nate realizes his pocket is buzzing. “Yeah.”

“Hey,” says Rick, and then in quick succession, “Where are you? You free? Wanna go to Ebbitt’s?”

“I’m, uh—at the Navy Yard.”

“The hell?” asks Rick. “Why?”

“Work,” lies Nate, watching the suits move to gather around another invisible marker, or another patch of dirt. The old image of the waterfront is slowly dissolving around him, taking with it any memories, and now he just feels out of place, disconcertingly touristy in a way he hadn’t when he was last here. “But I can meet you.”

“I’ll let you get back to asking to get mugged,” says Rick. “Just found an open Panera. But you owe me.”

“I do?” asks Nate. “For not going to Ebbitt’s with you?”

“Yeah. I’ll consider the debt made up if you come to my niece's hockey game tomorrow. I can’t go alone again, or I have to be drunk.”

Nate hedges, and Rick quickly adds, “I’ll buy you dinner to keep me company. I’m asking. Please.”

“Sounds like begging,” says Nate, but agrees. “It better be good dinner.”

“Best dinner ever,” says Rick, and hangs up.

Nate turns to leave anyway, water slowly seeping through the eyelets of his left shoe. It’s not the same, with the construction noise and human activity. The whole waterfront seems somehow dusty to him.

: : :

“You got drunk anyway,” Nate reminds Rick on Saturday, surreptitiously passing back the flask in the highest part of the bleachers. He’s not sure how strict the Iceplex is about open containers; pretty strict, he’s willing to bet. “Your sister know you’re drunk at her kid’s hockey game?”

“I’m not drunk, I’m just getting warm,” says Rick, leaning back against the wall. “And I’m Irish, anyway. Aren’t you?”

“Me?” laughs Nate, accepting the flask again.

“What’s so funny?”

“No, I’m not Irish.”

Rick looks suspicious. “What are you, then?”

The alcohol goes down like magma and Nate has to keep from coughing. “German and Scottish, somewhere back there. The usual Northeast mutt. My family’s been here since the early nineteenth century, so I’m not really anything, at this point.”

“Aren’t you from Boston?” asks Rick.

“Me?” says Nate. “Are _you_ from Boston?”

“Born and raised,” says Rick. “Where the hell are you from? Can’t believe I haven’t asked. Guess I thought I knew.”

“I thought I noticed something off about your vowels,” says Nate.

“Jesus, are you gonna answer my question or not? You should work for Washington Mutual customer service.”

Nate fixes his syllables. “I’m from Ballimer.”

“I guess that makes sense,” says Rick. “Weird, don’t know why I thought you were from Boston.”

“Neither do I. What’s the opposite of flattered?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Goal,” redirects Nate, and claps.

Rick gives him a look of patent disgust. “You’re the guy that claps at sports?”

“Oh, fuck you,” says Nate, shoving him. “We can’t all show our appreciation by picking fights in the stands.”

 

As they walk back along North Randolph towards the IHOP where they’re meeting the niece's mother, Nate plays a game he hasn’t been able to play in a while. It’s him, Rick, and the kid, who has braces and a ponytail. Rick’s shouldering her gear bag, holding her mittened hand in his gloved one, and turns around to laugh and clap Nate on the back, saying something about him. Nate barely hears it, but returns the smile as they stand and wait on the icy sidewalk. She could be his kid—could look the part, at least. She has the hair and the same uniform, unremarkable Anglo-Saxon features, and maybe one day she’ll grow up and, like Nate, also wonder if using “Anglo-Saxon,” even mentally, makes her a douchebag—if, Nate has to correct himself, _if_ she were his kid. He scrubs his face, old wool rough against his face. Fuck. He doesn’t want kids, he’s only trying out the absurd scenario to imagine Brad beside him, too.

“You don’t want IHOP, do you?” asks Rick, breaking through the fog. The kid—Ashley, maybe—is still hanging onto Rick, looking at Nate.

Nate doesn’t, but is about to automatically agree when he sees Rick raise his eyebrows and shake his head minutely.

“Uh, no,” says Nate. “Thanks.”

When they’re back at the Ballston-MU station, fumbling with the Metro passes in their wallets, Rick says, “Hope you didn’t actually want IHOP.”

“Nope.”

“It’s just that—” Rick waits for Nate to get past the turnstile “—my sister would’ve wanted to talk and eat for like three hours, and the whiskey’s telling me I want Five Guys.”

Nate doesn’t really want to talk and eat for three hours, either, and follows him down the stairs.

 

When they sit down with their trays, Nate gropes around in his brain for something mildly interesting to update Rick with, anything that doesn’t involve oblique mentions of things Brad did or didn’t do. Rick makes the decision for him, mumbling something incomprehensible behind his hand as he chews.

“What?”

“I said,” Rick swallows, “I finally read that book of yours.”

“You can read?” says Nate, internally groaning.

“Sure can,” Rick replies, and then, at Nate’s silence, asks, “What? If you’re looking for an in-depth review, I’m just gonna quote one.”

“No, no, not looking,” says Nate, and feels like thanking him. “Don’t know why you read it, but thanks.”

“I read it ‘cause I know the guy that wrote it. That’s pretty much the only reason. Why’d you write it?”

Nate can’t help the laughter from escaping. “Shut up, man.”

“Man, the parties you must get invited to now,” says Rick.

“The only thing the book’s done for me,” Nate remembers, “is open up the hallowed carpeted halls of the University Club.”

At Rick’s silence, Nate looks up and reluctantly clarifies, “You know, on—”

“I know where it is.”

Nate’s not sure why he even mentioned it; continuing this is painful. “Now that the book’s out, my editor said I should keep an eye for an invitation.”

He meant it as something to laugh at, but Rick glares at him over his burger. “Fuck you.”

Nate grins anyway. “Man, it is refreshing to hear that.”

“What, too many people proclaiming their undying love?”

“No,” says Nate. “Just refreshing to hear it said out loud.”

Rick only rolls his eyes. “So what are you doing here, slumming it with me, eating Five Guys?”

“God, you should talk to someone I know,” Nate mutters, dragging a fry through ketchup.

“Yeah? Who?”

“Doesn’t matter, but you two’d get along.”

“She single?”

There is nothing for Nate to do but laugh.

“So how’s that girlfriend?” Rick asks.

“Jesus Christ,” says Nate. “You’re more obsessed than I am.”

“Just worried about you, pal.”

“That’s my—” and he hesitates “—best friend.”

“Yeah?” says Rick, raising an eyebrow, though he looks like he’s taking it seriously.

“Yeah,” Nate admits, finishing his fries. “If you had to drag it out of me.”

“So what’s the mystery?”

“What mystery?” says Nate. He’s not going to admit he’s stalling.

Rick waves a fry. “The whole not telling me who it really was business. If she’s your friend.”

Well, thinks Nate. At least it’s a step in the right direction.

“We’re, uh,” says Nate. “We’re just going through a—rough patch.”

Rick nods sagely. “Talk every day kind of best friend or you grew up together or what?”

“What does it matter?” asks Nate. “We were in Iraq together,” and doesn’t mention his rank, or Brad’s.

“A chick?” says Rick, apparently impressed. “Damn, Nate.”

Now Nate figures he has to give it up. “It’s a guy, Rick, God damn it.”

Rick looks surprised and then says, “Well, how the hell am I supposed to know? Did I not say ‘she’ a hundred times?”

“I don’t know,” says Nate, irritated.

“So what’s up with that?”

Fuck it, Nate thinks, in what feels like the hundredth time this month.

When he’s finishing telling the story to Rick with all the careful omissions and not-quite additions to make himself seem less pathetic, he can barely recognize himself and Brad in it. The way he tells it, it’s a happy story, seems mutual or at least heading towards it, a little vague, he knows, to Rick, and some of it’s even the truth—but it’s not their story. It seems like the same kind of thinly-veiled fiction the book felt like after the editing.

“And now,” Nate finishes awkwardly, “I guess we’re not talking.” The conclusion followed the half-truth that they fought about the book. At least it’s true on the surface.

Rick is scratching his head, looking thoughtful. “I don’t know, man,” he says finally.

Nate snorts. “Great. That makes three of us.”

“I mean,” says Rick, “I guess—I don’t know. I don’t really get the situation. You sure it’s not a chick, after all?”

Nate wills the color from rising to his face. “Trust me, I’m sure.”

“Maybe the guy’s jealous,” Rick offers, and Nate is officially finished with this conversation.

“Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“I feel like I’m missing some information here.”

Nate is tempted, just like he was tempted with his sister, but he hasn’t lost all of his self-control. “That’s all there is,” he says, and continues eating.

: : :

Rick follows him to his apartment under the pretenses of continuing their scintillating conversation about Keurig brewing systems, but Nate knows it’s in hopes that Nate will drive him back to Ballston. February brought several inches of snow, and Nate will probably do it, but not without having some coffee and finding a thicker pair of gloves.

The University Club membership letter—application, whatever—is waiting for him in his mailbox. Now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t know if he meant it as something to laugh at. Maybe he didn’t mean that the arbitrary membership itself was laughable—just that they’d choose him for it. He doesn’t know when thoughts like that started surfacing.

Rick has already helped himself to an apple and is wiping its splattered juice off of the University Club envelope. It’s embossed.

“So when are you announcing your candidacy for president?” Rick asks.

Nate will play along. He gets water for the coffee. “That’s relatively far off. Probably should work on the senatorship first, huh?”

Rick shrugs. “I wouldn’t be surprised. So you gonna stay here, or what?”

Nate _is_ surprised. He’s not sure when he’s given any indication to anyone but—but Brad and his family that he isn’t doing what he wants to be doing, not forever and not particularly now. “I—did I tell you anything about that?”

“About what?” asks Rick. “Moving?”

“Yeah—yeah, I guess.”

“I don’t know,” says Rick. “Maybe. Nothing too specific. Just get the feeling you’re not, like—you know. Dead inside enough to be here forever.”

A surprised laugh escapes Nate. “Really?” He’s not sure if he’s surprised at the assessment, or at the fact that he thought he really did play the part well enough to be here forever.

“So what’s the plan? New York? Belize? The Vineyard with all the other douchebags?”

Nate laughs again, if only to give himself time to think of an answer. “You thought I wasn’t dead enough to be here, but I’d move to New York?”

“Or Belize. You need sun, man.”

“Thanks,” says Nate, and then, for some reason, adds, “It sucks that this was the city I first lived in when I got back.”

“From Iraq?” asks Rick, blunt. Nate appreciates him.

“Yeah. I would’ve probably liked to live here.”

“I don’t think so.”

Nate shrugs. “Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll be back. What do you know? You live in Ballston.”

Rick only nods and doesn’t ask him any more questions about leaving.

 

When Nate returns to his apartment that evening and flips on the light, he surveys the room in the dim, yellowing light afforded by the busted bulb. Brad was here for three days; Nate doesn’t understand why he doesn’t feel the usual relief when guests leave, and why instead it feels as though Brad had just left—not a day ago, but several moments ago, as if he had just left the room, moving into the bedroom to wait for Nate.

Nate looks around the apartment, still standing on the interior mat, feeling disheveled. He pauses in his impatience with the sudden descent into bathos, not because he wants to but because the melodrama seems to overwhelm him for a moment.

This is the house that Brad built, he realizes. This is the couch he slept on and the bed he fucked Nate in and the counter he ate at, if only once. This is the picture he righted when he passed by. Here’s where he threw his coat. Nate moves through his apartment like he’s on some abysmal tour. Jesus, he thinks. He liked this apartment. He would have liked to live here longer. He can’t. He’s aware he’s being dramatic, but it seems an appropriate time to allow himself these thoughts. This is the life that Brad built, or that he let Brad build. That thought scares him too much to spare much more energy towards. When did he let it get this far?

He drops onto the couch, scarf somehow getting caught underneath him and pulling tight around his neck. Fucking Brad, he thinks, accidentally hitting the remote as he struggles with the scarf. At least he still has enough energy to be angry.

: : :

Aside from the University Club application, which he’s filled out but left in its foil-lined envelope, pending references, he gets another invitation. Dartmouth wants to know if he’d be part of a series of lectures they’re having, something set up by the Rockefeller Center. He doesn’t know why he agrees to do it, except for the fact that it seems like something—the first thing in a long time—to _do_. It takes a day and a phone conversation to make even the possibility of leaving DC exhausting.

“We’ll probably have to coordinate through ROTC, right?” the woman on the phone is asking him, like Nate was the one that called her. “Have they spoken to you?”

“I never did ROTC,” says Nate, wasting ink on a brief he read last week. He wants to ask if they’ve done any fucking research at all, but contents himself with doodling the rest of the alphabet beside the heading NATURAL RESOURCES.

“Oh. We just assumed.”

“Well—yeah. No. Not affiliated.”

“Got it.”

“Yep,” says Nate; the silence as he hears typing over the line is loud and buzzing. “Just—went ahead and joined up all on my own.”

“Right,” she draws out. “Well, sir—” and Nate knows, somehow, that it feels different, that it’s the civilian kind of _sir_ “—we just need a bio from you.”

There’s some more awkward verbal fumbling between him and the woman in whatever department, and Nate wonders if he hasn’t lost his touch for communication that isn’t relayed in the receipt and transmission of orders. The ink has seeped through the brief and into a memo about cake in the break room by the time he hangs up.

The biographical stuff is simple enough; he can take that from his editor’s blurb on the book jacket. The idea of keeping in “captained the cycling team to a U.S. National Championship” entertains him briefly, before he takes it out, along with the other civilian absurdities that had been received so seriously by his editor. No one needs to know about the Peloponnesian War thesis, which had only become a point of pride years after he had written it. At the time he mostly realized that he hated Thucydides, not on his own merits but because he couldn’t look at a single line of the _History_ anymore. After Afghanistan it had still seemed apposite; after Iraq, it seemed kind of juvenile. As it’s meant to, Nate thinks, pressing the backspace key. Maybe he should start cycling again, he thinks, but he feels too out of shape to start anything up again. That’s a healthy feedback loop you’ve got here, Fick, he tells himself.

He wonders how to write his name. Nathaniel Fick—he had always liked the cadence of his name, and been proud of the surname he shared with his father and grandfather—but something now compels him to simply write _Nate_ . He types it out and sits back, contemplating it before the letters begin looking foreign. He erases it, tapping the keys slowly, and then types out the most ridiculous thing he can come up with: _Captain Nathaniel C. Fick, Dartmouth Class of ‘99_. The time when he ever felt he identified with the Dartmouth Class of ‘99 seems very distant. What the hell, he thinks, they’ll probably add that on anyway, and sends it.

 

This time, and he’s not sure if it’s out spite, he tells the listserv. At the very least it’s so nobody can accuse him of being a coward. All he sends is the e-mail flyer the Rockefeller Center sent him, with the professional headshot that makes him look “distinguished” according to his parents and “like a tool” according to Rick, who saw it on the company website.

Ray edits the message with “Fick sold out.” When Nate sees it back in his Outlook inbox, he just laughs. At least it garners some interest; other than that, he can’t seem to bring himself to care. The specter of respect that had haunted him throughout his interactions with any of the men, even Brad, had long since evaporated; he’s not sure what connection he has with any of them now, beyond the listserv. Maybe Brad will read it, Nate thinks—without hope, he notes—and make his own conclusions about it, conclusions Nate doesn’t know how to speculate about anymore.

: : :

They put him up at the Hanover Inn, which was the same hotel he remembers his parents staying at when they visited him. The Inn is showing its age, the ivory paint peeling under the outlet in the corner. The room he was given has two beds for some presumptuous—or completely incidental—reason, and he throws his seabag against the plaid pillows on the bed closer to the bathroom. He wonders what to wear, thinking of the Ivy uniform that had gotten him through most interviews and semi-professional occasions here, the ubiquitous navy blazer and khakis. It feels too predictable, too compatible, in a way; he realizes his analysis of the kind of message his clothes send is insane, and he pulls on a striped rugby polo before he can give it any more undeserved thought.

 

An hour before his speech, Nate is standing before the spire, looking up. Behind him, if he cranes his neck, Hanover looks like a little model town, lights twinkling as though battery-operated. There’s a strange consistency to their flickering. The inky clouds have parted around the library spire, and Nate takes a deep breath of air. He had convinced himself, while he was still here, that he couldn’t wait to leave, and then spent the next four years after that convincing himself he had been wrong in his assessment, that he didn’t really feel that way when he _was_ there. He’s not sure what side of that coin he feels now. Things seem to have changed, slid into opposites; now that he’s back, he expected to feel nostalgia for the old halls, the kegs, the friends he barely thinks about, but all he feels is that senior year superiority, the thing that he thought had saved him from the oppressive, overwhelming aimlessness that seemed to follow him through all the classes and parties, ever since the whole doctor thing fell off: that he was going to be a United States Marine, a citizen soldier, whatever else he knew he wanted to put on paper and show people one day. Maybe Brad was right, maybe there was an element of phoniness about the whole thing—if that’s what he meant.

Nate shoves his hands in his pockets. It probably wasn’t what Brad meant. Brad probably meant something that seems worse to Nate and makes him realize that his rootlessness is visible, and not only that—that it’s transparent.

It’s something to consider, a lesson he probably had to learn sometime, but he wishes Brad hadn’t been the one to tell him. It’s not the best thing to consider before giving a speech, either, so he grabs the cold brass handle and enters the hallway.

: : :

By the end of his speech, which he’s rehearsed enough to get through on autopilot, he realizes it’s the same nebulous, platitudinal half-hour affair that everyone has sat through before. Even as he’s speaking, mouthing the words as he produces the sounds, he thinks about the book, and the speech, and everything in his head before and after them: that maybe it was insane to think he could package it up so neatly. There’s the distinct—but, he acknowledges, wholly imaginary—feeling of being listened to, in the way that only Brad seemed to be capable of.

 _And so_ , he thinks, concluding, “It’s a lot like being stuck in traffic, which is something we experienced a lot on the highways we took through Mesopotamia. You think you blame the car in front of you, but you don’t, not really. You know it’s probably not his fault, though distantly you do know that it’s the fault of someone in front of him. But not one person’s—everyone’s fault, and no one’s in particular. And that’s what makes the situation difficult to assess.”

The formal conclusion he had practiced goes here, he thinks during the pause. He had liked that line a lot, when he thought of it while stuck in traffic on one of the rare days he drove his car in DC, but now, before an audience with an imaginary Brad, it feels somehow hollow. Not bad enough to be false, Nate thinks, but not particularly solid, either.

As he scans the crowd, something compels him to finish, “I think the craziest thing is this: those commercials. I’m sure you’ve all seen the Army commercials—Army Strong. That’s a good one, a classic. And you’ve seen the USMC commercials—yeah?” There are some nods. “That’s right, a few good men. There were some with dress blues, around a couple years ago. You ever see those dress blues commercials?” He smiles. “I think there was one with a dragon, and a marine with a sword. Something like that. Anyway, sometimes I still see them and think, wow, I want to be a marine.” The crowd is silent, waiting, and Nate suddenly doesn’t know why he said that, went on that tangent. “I don’t think that’ll ever go away. All right. Thanks.”

It seems a fitting end, and he has nothing else to add, anyway. Leaving his planned conclusion the way he had inteded was probably a better idea, but he doubts anyone will remember the speech, anyway. It certainly won’t work as a recruitment speech, but it wasn’t too severe either. He made himself look good enough. _A perfect reflection of your book_ , he thinks bitterly, but exits and gives the crowd a small smile nonetheless. He supposes he has to give Dartmouth more credit, because he allows himself an involuntary half-second pause for the anticipated imaginary jeers. The possibility, or the expectation, is one of those leftover insecurities, vestiges of Brad; Nate ignores it.

 

He sticks around for the meet-and-greet because it is, allegedly, for him. He’s approached with a few half-hearted attempts at conversation, and he’s glad for the lack of interest—who goes to these alumni things, anyway? he thinks, chewing absently on the crushed ice in his Jack and Coke. He wouldn’t have gone to something like this when he was here. It seems more like a cocktail party for students to suck up to their professors, but there is a bar and even if it’s not free, Nate is grateful. He knows he’s mixing liquors. It might be on purpose.

Inane questions filter through, and the last one that he answers, something with words like _your experience_ and _political repercussions_ , makes him realize he should probably move away from the counter, preferably without a drink in his hand, wet napkin disintegrating in his fingers.

He’s just thinking about an early night when he meets eyes he’s seen before. His grip loosens on the plastic cup. He swears it’s Brad, and then someone is in front of him, cutting out of his vision.

By the time Nate’s finished politely curbing the question, Brad has disappeared.

He allows himself three minutes of frenetic deliberation in the hallway, cold brass bannister making his palms clammy as he holds on it, leaning against the wall. This would mean that Brad was back in the States, which was admittedly outside of the scope of Nate’s present knowledge, or on leave again, which was ridiculous; he had spent that on Christmas. He’s reminded of Homer’s phantom Aeneas, sent by Apollo to rally the Trojans into continuing battle. _Fuck, fuck, fuck_ , he thinks, and it’s a lot different than thinking _fuck it._

 

By the time he finds Brad outside, he still hasn’t decided on his reaction. Melting snow drips from the eaves, and Brad’s coat is dotted with dark circles. The lighting is for shit under the overhang; Nate can’t tell if Brad’s looking at him or not, silhouetted in the weak halogen rays.

Finally, he decides, “You know, Brad, if this is your form of an apology, it’s—”

“Good, because that’s not what it is,” snaps Brad.

They stare at each other a little more. Fuck, thinks Nate.

“You look good,” is Brad’s eventual assessment. He pushes himself off of the wall. “Up there.”

“If you came here,” says Nate, and has to reach out to the handrail to steady himself, “to start with this bullshit, you really are a piece of work.”

“Came a little late.” Brad’s voice is somewhere to Nate’s left, but his figure is hidden in the darkness he’s stepped into. Nate cranes his neck to pick out Brad’s fingers brushing water off his shoulders. “Missed what you read at first. Heard the second part, though. The part with the two boys, right?”

“I don’t suppose you’re here to argue with me on details?” asks Nate after the silence, immediately feeling like a douchebag. There’s nothing else to say, though, and he wants to keep pace with Brad as long as he can.

“No,” says Brad, coming around to the rail, to look at Nate. His eyes are hard. “Why’d you choose that to read?”

It sounds like a simple question, a fan or friend wondering.

“Best way to demonstrate to all of these burgeoning freethinkers how evil the ‘army’ is?” It’s a pretty weak counterpoint; uncertainty hangs behind the bravado. It’s a little frightening, coming from Brad.

Nate whirls around. “You know it’s not that.”

“I know,” says Brad. “Do they?”

“I didn’t write for them,” says Nate.

“Then for whom?”

Nate doesn’t have an answer to that. He remembers when the book published, he thought it was so level, so balanced that no side of the debate could claim it as theirs. “You’re acting like this was some giant calculated act of betrayal, which isn’t even selfish, it’s just insanely self-obsessed.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Brad mutters, and walks around the side of the building. Nate follows him down the ramp.

“Brad!”

“I guess I should be grateful they let me into this house of peace,” Brad says conversationally, in the same incredibly irritating tone he adopted earlier.

“You asshole. I left you out of—”

“How noble of you.”

“Are you serious?” says Nate. “You’re here to—what? I don’t fucking get it.”

“Oh, please,” says Brad, brushing falling snow from his shoulder. “What exactly did you expect, Captain, when you sent out that e-mail?”

And Brad’s right, but that doesn’t answer Nate’s question. Nate is still formulating a less damning response when Brad continues on in the same blithe tone. “Well, I’m sure they enjoyed this public unburdening of guilt,” he says, spreading his arms. “Kumbaya.”

“Guilt isn’t the fucking worst thing to feel, Brad,” Nate replies, giving up. He doesn’t know what they’re talking about anymore. Brad was with him when the two boys were shot. And Nate had written that he mourned for the kid he was in the dark, away from the platoon, alone, but fuck, he could take some creative license—Brad had been there, at least for a moment, not touching him, but there, and Nate knows they both know it. Brad had seemed to understand then. Nate doesn’t know what he had managed to skew so badly in the few pages that Brad couldn’t recognize the two of them in the book.

“Oh, you’re not guilty,” says Brad, still looking at him. “You just think you’re guilty because,” and he says this part slowly and evenly, so Nate doesn’t really know what’s coming until it hits him— “you’re so fucking up your own ass you think everything you did or didn’t do was a direct product of your own decisions.”

Nate swings. He doesn’t miss, but he doesn’t connect either. All he’s left with is Brad’s fingers closed around his fist.

For a moment, Brad’s eyes turn dark. Nate feels the bones in his hands shift as Brad clenches harder and starts, “If you—”

Whatever was in Brad’s eyes is gone just as quickly as he cuts himself off and laughs. “You’re so drunk, I saw that coming before you even thought about it.” He lets Nate’s hand fall back down by his side. “Jesus Christ. Don’t drive.”

Nate waits a moment and then stumbles out into the snow after him, scrambling for some kind of response.

“You wanted to be your own man so you joined the Marines, and I’m the one that can’t get his head out of his ass? Okay, Brad.”

Brad reels on him. “If I remember correctly, that extends to you too, _Captain_.”

“There’s a fucking difference.”

“The difference is that I joined because I knew who I was,” Brad snarls. “You joined because you wanted to find out.”

That one cuts to the quick, but Nate retorts anyway, “I’m not the one still harboring those illusions.”

“Yeah? Fine,” says Brad. “Who’s the one returning to the Ivy League horseshit machine? And to do what?”

“Well,” says Nate eventually, spreading his arms out in defeat, “I’m glad we had a fight about the nature of the higher education system in the United States. Anything else you’d like to say?”

“Nope,” says Brad, pulling out a yellow Hertz key fob.

“Brad!” Nate calls out in a last-ditch effort as the alcohol slowly slips away. “Brad, we’re _friends_ , for Christ’s sake!”

At least it gets Brad to stop at his car, to where Nate can shuffle out, skidding a little on the ice.

“We were never friends.”

“What?” Nate gapes. “Are you kidding me with this bullshit?”

“I asked you this a hundred times,” says Brad. “If you had started all this with friendship in mind or something else. And every time you told me it was something else.”

Nate stares at him, and then the dam breaks. “Brad,” he says, “The ‘something else’ was that I _love_ you. I don’t know what you think that means. I—what do you think that means?”

“Love is what happens to people who don’t know each other,” says Brad.

Nate’s not sure which part of that to focus on—the fact that Brad doesn’t love him or that he thinks they know each other. Both are pretty laughable ideas, at this point. Oddly enough, the idea that Brad feels something for him is the only certainty he’s convinced himself he has. He can’t tell if it’s another defense mechanism or if it’s actually the truth.

The click of the car doors tears him out of his thoughts.

“We’re not doing this anymore!” Nate shouts. He doesn’t give a shit if it’s Dartmouth College, which seems like a movie backdrop anyway, like it’s going to topple over any second and Nate will be left standing in some warehouse—in that fucking Iraqi cigarette factory.

He waits for Brad to answer, “We weren’t doing anything,” but he doesn’t. Brad gets in his car. If Brad could hear him, Nate would call him a coward, and might even mean it.

Instead, he only thinks about bellowing “fuck you!” in the wake of the car’s exhaust. He doesn’t do that either. He doesn’t know what gets to Brad. He can’t say the same for Brad, though. Brad appears to know what gets to Nate pretty well.

: : :

The scene at the Manchester airport the next morning is bleak, though not any more bleak than the room he had returned to last night, the dimmed light glinting off of the chocolate on his pillow. He had laid awake until four, waiting for the familiar headlights of the occasional car, but none passed. He’d left CNN on while he showered in the morning and staggered out with conditioner still in his hair to turn it off when the news turned to Iraq.

By the grace of God, there’s a Dunkin in the terminal, but his headache is apparently strong enough that it doesn’t dissipate from the coffee vapors. It reminds him, distantly, of a few hungover Thanksgiving plane rides, back to Baltimore—the same half-molded expectation, the limbo between two places that weren’t quite home anymore. For the first time, he hopes his phone is ringing with some work-related issue, anything to snap him out of the nostalgic collegiate haze, but it’s Kate, who would always call him as he was at the gate. He thumbs the green button, not quite pressing it, until the phone stops vibrating and he quickly answers.

“Hey, Kate.”

“What’s it like to be famous?” she asks.

He snorts. “Right.”

“Daddy told me about the University Club membership.” Right. His parents, at least, were convinced he was an adequate candidate. “How’d it go?”

“Fine, I guess,” he says. He continues rubbing sleep out of the eye that’s gone blurry, and adjusts the bag on his shoulder.

“How was good ol’ Big Green?”

Nate rolls his shoulder. “Okay. The Inn’s looking worse for wear. I feel like I slept on a rock.”

“Oh, poor Princess and the Pea. How’d the speech go?”

Because he’s getting increasingly bad—or, worse, lax—about withholding things and because, he tells himself, the speech was unremarkable anyway, he says, “Brad showed up.”

Kate emits an “oh” that Nate can’t read, and then prompts, “Okay, and that’s—unexpected?”

“Uh, yes?” says Nate. “Considering—considering. Yes. It’s unexpected.”

After a beat, Kate hazards, “How is he?”

He remembers that Kate doesn’t know, or didn’t notice, or is wilfully ignoring, that he and Brad aren’t—that Christmas was the sudden demise of something that had been crumbling for a long time, potentially from its start.

“I don’t know,” he snaps. “I really have no clue.”

“Well,” she says, and he can hear her more clearly now, like she’s sat down with the phone. “What happened?”

That’s another question he can’t answer.

“Did you and him—” starts Kate, and he doesn’t let her finish.

“No, me and him didn’t.”

“I’m not prying, Nate,” she says, sounding exasperated. Nate doesn’t blame her. “I wish you would stop acting like I was. But I think it’s a little juvenile, honestly, to keep thinking you’re keeping us all in the dark. At least me. I don’t know about Mommy and Daddy, unless you’ve mentioned something to them.”

Something in that offends him, or at least his recon sensibilities, that this wasn’t some secret thing that he was allowing to fully form before he let anyone else see it. He bites back any retort about being juvenile and the way she addresses their parents.

“Kate,” he says, pressing the phone closer into his jaw, “just because you saw something—thought you saw something—between me and someone, once, doesn’t mean I’ve adopted some—lifestyle.”

Infuriatingly, Kate laughs. It’s not unkind, but it still serves to bring up resentment. “I know that. I think you know I know that. I wouldn’t be asking if it was just ‘a guy.’”

Nate knows, and is suddenly awash with the understanding that it is stupid—more than a little—to think that no one knows, or can tell, about Brad. Some soft, uncertain part of him tells him that now it’s safe to tell Kate, safe to complain about the inevitability of something _not_ happening, not ever and not now.

“How’s the baby?” Nate asks instead, and hopes that’s more neutral ground.

: : :

It’s the third time he’s sat on or lost his glasses in the couch cushions, but Nate hasn’t worked at his desk since the last time he and Brad discussed sunny California. Nate glances at the clock; it’s midnight. Work has been finished for the past hour, sitting in his Outlook outbox and waiting for morning, but he can’t bring himself to close the computer and go to bed. He stands and hesitates, and finally pulls out the drawer. The four blue letters glare at him.

Nate can’t decide if it’s a testament to his single-minded conviction that he and Brad understood each other, or if it’s only pitiful proof of his misjudgement of the situation, the complete loss of his ability to evaluate his own position.

The envelope gets shoved back into the drawer, and even though it ought to feel like a victory over the past two years, it only feels like he’s conceded defeat.

Harvard, Yale, Georgetown—they’re all already in. Somehow it doesn’t seem like it’s been two years—two jobs and two apartments, too—before he collected himself enough to submit the applications. His parents had never pressured him to get serious, and especially not after he came back; if anything, all of them, Kate included, had tried to disguise the eggshell-walking as support, delicate encouragement. The questions of ambition were hushed into questions about what he’d had for dinner, which seemed about as narrow as his scope would go; otherwise it swung wildly to the long, empty stretch ahead, populated by work assignments and little else—before and, he realizes, after Brad.

Nate still doesn’t know what he wants, what he wants to do, the city he wants to spend his life in, aside from what he knows and has always known is coming anyway. All he knows is that he sees all of this for all it is, the pathetic attempt to extend his youth, the period of time where indecision is acceptable, accepted. Maybe Brad is part of that, after all—part of the book and part of this, trying to make anything permanent that isn’t, the experiences dead and gone. Maybe Brad was right; maybe Nate is so angry because Brad is trying to rip away the one soft, comforting certainty that he has in his life, this relationship he’s convinced himself they have and always had. Nate realizes he’s pretty screwed if he can no longer distinguish, as he once promised Brad he could, between that and love. It’s the first of many theories about Brad that he eventually rejects.

: : :

Snow melts. DC turns ugly in the transitory period between deep winter and something resembling spring. The only pink in the city is the nearly month-old Valentine’s Day candy abandoned in SALE heaps throughout the Walgreens Nate stops in during lunch. He buys a copy of Wired for no particular reason at all and lotion for a reason he’d rather not admit to. More likely than not it’ll go under the sink; the last time he tried to do anything resembling jerking off was terminated by lack of concentration, because of the coughing neighbor and the floorboards in the hallway outside his apartment creaking as someone walked by.

As he’s clicking around the internet, not particularly eager to be assigned any more busywork briefs through the week, he finds the online flyer for the lecture series his appearance was evidently a part of. He was billed, though not in so many words, as the conservative contrast to the second speaker, whom he hadn’t stayed in Hanover long enough to catch or take an interest in. There’s nothing he can do but laugh. He considers sending a link to everyone, with the subject SURPRISE! I’M A CONSERVATIVE.

He refrains from doing so, and escapes at fifteen minutes to five to go to the Caps game with Rick. They exchange distracted conversation between periods and during goal review, spilling beer onto the concrete of the Verizon Center. At some point Rick nearly puts his fist through the face of some guy in a Crosby jersey, but it’s a good distraction.

On the walk back to the Metro, Rick is drunk in a way Nate can’t imagine Brad ever being. He makes that remark, more or less, as he keeps Rick upright.

“Fuck, I want Singapore noodles,” is Rick’s only response. “Let’s go to fuckin’ Li Ho’s.”

Nate would rather eat his gloves than eat Chinese food after the several orders of nachos they shared, but Rick ends up steering them—with suspicious lucidity—to the sidewalk between Jackey’s and Eat First.

“This isn’t Li Ho,” Nate tells him.

“I can’t remember if Jackey’s was the place with the bug or if it was Eat First,” says Rick, contemplative.

Nate really doesn’t want to find out and tries to entice Rick with Panera.

“It was Jackey’s,” Rick settles, and pushes through the chiming door of Eat First.

Eat First doesn’t have an opaque layer of grease on the windows like Nate remembers Li Ho does, and Nate tunes out Rick’s Ray-like rambling as they sit and wait for their order. It’s uncomfortably hot, and now Rick has moved on from ripping apart Sidney Crosby fans to ripping apart Sidney Crosby. Rain is hitting the windows, Nate notices, hard droplets making indents in the dirty snow that’s somehow still in the gutters. With the whirr of the kitchen humming behind him and the clatter of Rick toying with the salt and pepper shakers, Nate feels a stab of indescribable longing.

“I’m gonna head home,” he decides abruptly, and almost stands up. He’s still wearing his coat.

Rick pauses in his philippic. “What? Why?”

“I don’t know. Feeling weird. Probably a migraine or something.” Rick looks concerned, even through the haze of several beers, so Nate adds, “I’ll be fine.”

He feels like he’s being scrutinized, Rick’s eyes still locked on him, even as Nate fumbles with the coat zipper like he’s actually going to leave.

“I know what’s wrong with you,” says Rick.

“What?” says Nate, feeling clammy.

Rick points an alarmingly steady finger at him. “Something’s fucking you up, man.”

“It’s—” Nate leans back to let the waiter slide Rick’s plate across to him, but even that pause doesn’t tamp down the desire to tell someone the whole truth. “It’s—what I told you before.”

Rick is silent.

“The guy,” adds Nate, and at least it’s more honest than just _friend_ , but Rick is still quiet, stirring his egg drop soup slowly. Fuck. Maybe he had misjudged Rick, and the situation. “But it’s—it’s not what you think it is.”

“I don’t think anything,” says Rick, aiming for reassuring, and Nate interrupts him. The point of no return was probably somewhere around the hotel room in France.

“Or maybe it is. I don’t know. Can you tell?”

“Can I tell what?”

Nate crumples his gloves in his hands and scrubs a hand through his hair. “Never mind.”

“What, it’s been two years? Three?” says Rick. “Do you guys really even know each other anymore?”

No, Nate realizes. He can’t even really be sure he knew Brad before. Instead, he says, “Then why am I here, two years later?”

“I don’t know,” says Rick. “But I’m guessing going through a war together isn’t something so easy to get over.”

Maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s just another facet of that initial reason Brad said he couldn’t do this. This is better than Kate’s naive optimism, he tells himself. This is probably what he needs to hear.

“I know what’ll fix you.”

“Excedrin?” Nate says. “I don’t need fixing. Sorry, man, I’m gonna go home.”

Rick waves a waiter over and asks for the noodles to go. The disgruntled waiter returns with the takeout bag and two fortune cookies. The “come again” doesn’t seem sincere, but Rick doesn’t seem to care.

 

It’s nine stops to Ballston and Nate stops counting by Rosslyn, when it’s too late to get off and walk back to his own apartment. Rick has eaten both of their fortune cookies and keeps nudging the container of noodles open as if considering eating it on the Metro.

“I have Excedrin at home,” Nate repeats. It’s futile.

“I’m not talking about Excedrin,” says Rick. “Come on.”

The front desk staff of Randolph Towers doesn’t even give them so much as a glance, and Rick just rolls his eyes when Nate looks at him, alarmed.

“It concerns me that you don’t need anything to get in,” says Nate.

“It concerned me that we didn’t even have a security card reader at the back entrances until last year,” is Rick’s apathetic answer. He’s holding the Chinese food bag up to his face, ostensibly checking for leaks. “Your place isn’t exactly Fort Knox, either.”

“Yeah, but,” says Nate, finger poised over the elevator buttons, “it’s Foggy Bottom.”

Rick shrugs and says, “PH.”

“Really?”

“ _Really_?” mocks Rick. “No. Four.”

“Forgive me for flattering you.”

 

The door to Rick’s apartment opens with a flash of the keypad and a click, and Rick turns on the lights as they get in.

“Fuck, it’s freezing.” Rick is moving through the living room, rubbing his shoulders. “Explore, I’m going to set the thermostat. Jesus. I swear someone comes in and turns this shit off.”

Conspiracy theories aside, the apartment smells fresh, looks relatively clean. Stainless steel gleams in the kitchen and a massive entertainment center takes up most of the living room wall, close to the balcony door.

“Nice,” says Nate, and when there’s no answer, wanders into the living room to find Rick tugging on a sweater.

“Why do you have a settee in your bedroom?”

“It’s a furnished apartment, cut me some fucking slack,” says Rick, rifling around in his bedside drawer. “What are you, an interior decorator?”

Nate is distracted by the aquarium in the living room, and leaves to inspect it. “Your fish is dead.”

“The piece of shit always does that,” Rick calls. “Tap on the glass.” Apparently Rick’s right, and the fish swims away from Nate’s finger.

“A-ha,” says Rick, returning triumphantly to the couch with a ziplock bag.

Nate squints. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

 

“So he just showed up?” Rick is asking as he lets out a mouthful of smoke against the black screen of the TV. The apartment is hazy, reminiscent of college.

“Yes,” says Nate, buoyed by the anachronistic nostalgia, and once he finally says it aloud to someone other than Brad its absurdity is too apparent. “Who does that?”

“Okay, man, why don’t you just give that back,” says Rick, taking back the joint Nate was gesticulating with.

“Am I wrong here?” Nate asks. He’s never had to voice that question before, even if he’s asked it many times.

“I mean,” starts Rick, swallowing wine. “Ah, that went down wrong. Hey, I forgot about the food. You want some?”

“I’m fine.” In fact he feels some latent nausea, but wills it away. The microwave beeps and Nate twists around to watch Rick poke at the styrofoam, which Nate is pretty sure shouldn’t go in that appliance. “Is that normal human behavior?”

Rick’s “What is?” is muffled by the noodles as he returns to sit front of the couch, shoving away the coffee table. The already rank smell of Chinese food mixed with weed is sickly-sweet and churns his stomach.

“The—his name is Brad,” says Nate, too tired—or high, he cringes—for epithets. “Brad showing up to the hospital, and then Dartmouth. That can’t be normal.”

“I don’t know, man. Maybe he just cares.”

“Right,” says Nate. “I don’t think him caring is the problem here.”

“Then what is?”

“Everything else.” Nate leans back. “Christ, I get it’s not supposed to be easy, but love isn’t supposed to flay you apart!”

Nate can hear Rick’s chewing catch on _love_ , and dread sets in when Rick pauses. “Filet?”

“What—flay, Rick, Jesus, like tear apart.”

They sit there in the silence that follows, Nate stewing in anxiety and self-reprobation—fuck, how high is he?—until Rick speaks up again, apparently having forgotten the entire exchange.

“I mean, it’s weird,” admits Rick, getting hot sauce on his thumb and licking it off. “But just because he doesn’t do shit that you want him to doesn’t mean you two aren’t friends.”

Nate might have omitted a pertinent detail in that story. “He also told me we were never friends.”

“Man, what? This story is fucking confusing. Are you two friends or not?”

“We—some stuff happened,” Nate says. As soon as the phrase leaves his mouth, he hopes that either Rick didn’t hear it, or that he understood it and wouldn’t ask questions.

“That made him think you guys weren’t friends? Aside from the fight?”

“That made him think we were more than that, and then weren’t. I’m not going to go into more detail.”

Rick just exhales and turns it into a slow whistle. He offers Nate the joint. Nate knows he doesn’t want a response, but still finds himself still expecting one.

It comes when Rick sets aside an empty carton and leans his head back against the seat of the couch. “Man, I feel bad for this dude.”

“What? What have I told you that indicated you needed to pity _him_ in this situation?”

“If I’m this confused, I have no idea what this guy thinks is going on.”

“It’s Brad,” Nate corrects.

“You need to have more of this,” says Rick. “Seriously. The Caps just won and you’re stressing me out.”

“Fine.” The remains of the joint smolder between his fingertips. He thought he’d forgotten how to do this since the end of the dorms; apparently not. “Like riding a bicycle.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He takes a drag. “So we’ll chalk that relationship up to a loss.”

“That was quick.”

“We’re politically incompatible,” says Nate, punctuating each justification with another inhale.

“Weren’t the two of you both in the Marines?”

Nate waves the smoke and the sentiment away. “He’s obsessed with the book, like it’s some personal insult.”

“Did you write about him?”

“No.” Mostly true.

Nate gets an eyebrow raise. “Maybe that’s why.”

“It’s not why,” says Nate.

Rick throws up his hands. “Then I’m out of ideas, man. Sometimes you’re just at the wrong place in the wrong time. Also, ash that, I don’t know how you’re not burning your fingers.”

Actually, Nate was, and he feels it now, shaking out his hand.

“I can’t believe this is happening, man,” says Nate, parroting Rick’s favorite term of endearment.

Rick looks over at him. “You mean you weren’t waiting your whole tour for this?”

The question seems serious; Nate was referring to the weed, but now he’s not sure. “No.”

“I feel like I finally know something about you,” says Rick.

That takes Nate by surprise, and he finds himself saying, “We’ve known each other almost two years.”

“Yeah, but I felt like most of that was you knowing me. I spent the first six months calling you ‘the marine guy from work.’”

“Calling me that—to who?” His mouth feels like trying to talk through peanut butter, and he hopes the dry clicking sounds he’s making when he talks are only noticeable to him. “Or whom?”

Rick shrugs, eyes focused on the food. “People. You know, my mom, whatever.”

“You talk to your mom about me often?” teases Nate.

“Fuck you, man. You let me think you had a girlfriend since France.” Rick considers it through a forkful of wilted bok choy and adds, “And that you were from Boston.”

“That’s on you,” says Nate. He stretches his arms against the couch cushions. “You let yourself believe that.”

“Seriously, though,” says Rick, pausing with the remote pointed at the TV.

“What?”

“Sucks to see you so fucked up. Sometimes you start shit with the right person, but it’s the wrong place, wrong time.”

“I don’t know if that solves the problem,” Nate says slowly, “but thanks.”

“Yeah.” Rick claps him on the back and turns on ESPN. “Let’s watch some fucking highlights.”

 

Nate wakes with a start, disoriented and for some fucking reason on the floor. He’s on all fours before he knows it, behind the couch, like an idiot. His ascent is a bit slower, and he realizes the latent nausea is more immediate now, stomach unsettled. Rick is snoring on the couch. According to the clock, it’s five, and he feels relief followed by a wave of cold sweat when he realizes he could have woken up at nine, too. The Metro should be open, and he’s got enough time for a shower.

: : :

Nate gets into the office at nine, berating himself for the mild hangover but at least not smelling like Rick’s weed or carpet, and it takes him several minutes to get around to an email from the listserve. It’s now rerouted to his primary address, and he occasionally enjoys the bullshit. He pulls it up. The subject line is innocuous enough, even if the sender—Ray—isn’t, but the body reads:

_Brads at NHCP motherfuckers. Go send him flowers and balloons and shit 511 nurse has tits bigger than Rudys !!!!_

He almost Googles NHCP before the rush of adrenaline floods his head, first with panic, then with irrational thoughts. Why is Brad in the hospital, and where the fuck even is the Naval Hospital on camp grounds, and Jesus, California is six hours away by plane, never mind the actual time it would take to get from airport to airport. When Nate was a kid and he had been upset by something—usually his sister, or his failures in the swimming pool—he would daydream about going up to the Southwest ticket counter at BWI and requesting any departing flight. At eight he never did anything about it, just waited for the emotion to subside. He wonders why he didn’t do it. Well, he thinks, he was eight, for—

“You okay?”

Nate looks up to find a coworker—Josh? John?—standing there. “Yeah. Why?”

“I just asked you if it was the 15th, and you said, I believe so, and then asked you if you wanted chili or soup, to which you also replied that you believed so.”

“Jesus. Sorry. I’m okay, just really preoccupied.” Nate looks at his empty desk, cleared of anything to be visibly occupied with. “ _Is_ it the 15th?”

“No. That was Tuesday.”

“Right. Thanks, J—man.”

He stands up to get water but finds that he’s crushed the paper cup in his hand before even filling it, and sits back down at his desk, trying to find any meaningless points of productivity to do in lieu of doing what he should, which is buy the fucking plane ticket or, more realistically, sit in the empty conference room for a bit with his head between his legs. Logically, sanely, he knows he should e-mail, probably get some more information, but he doesn’t want any collaboration or anyone else’s input on this. A petty part of him doesn’t want anyone telling Brad that he’s coming and potentially risking Brad ignoring him, and a slightly less self-aware part thinks this is something he should do on his own. Suddenly he feels reckless and irresponsible, fucking around with Rick, and he doesn’t know why this situation inspires such self-castigation, as though he might’ve known that Brad was in fucking Oceanside, getting hospitalized.

Nate alternately tells himself he’s being unreasonable and then incredibly spineless before picking up the phone. Whoever-the-fuck passes by again, looking at him suspiciously. He dials Kate and hangs up after the first ring. He sits at his desk, tapping his lips with a pen. Maybe calling Rick would be a good idea. Kate calls him back before he can do so.

What comes out is, “Personal emergency or medical emergency?”

“What?” says Kate. “Nate, what?”

Jesus. He winces. “What’s better to put in an email to my boss?”

“ _Why_ would you put either of things? What’s going on?”

He feels bad that lately all of the interactions he’s had with his sister have been crisis-tinged, but he can’t focus on it. “I need to go to California.” He’s not sure whether he needs to go to California or be in California, but he pushes the semantics out of his head.

“For _what_?”

“Brad’s had some—I don’t know,” Nate realizes, and is awash with a fresh wave of terror. His fucking bike— “Some accident. Something. I don’t know and I really don’t have time—can’t get ahold of anyone to find out. Can you just tell me what sounds better in an email?”

“Family emergency,” she tells him. There some soft baby gurgling over the phone, and Nate wishes he could be distracted by anything else at the moment, but it’s impossible.

She won’t offer him any other advice, though, and now he’s at the airport with a fucking backpack of useless shit he’d shoved in when he came back to his apartment before getting a cab. Somehow the subway hadn’t seemed fast enough; he couldn’t risk having space to stand or pace. The grey blur of DC in March from the cab window seemed better.

: : :

He arrives in San Diego at seven on Friday morning by ridiculously expensive providence. The middle seat virtually in the galley and the restive layover in Chicago hadn’t had much of a noticeable effect on his overall discomfort, though the layover probably accounted for the disorientation he felt as he touched down in Lindbergh Field and wondered why he couldn’t find the signs for the Metro. Figuring out the bus—or worse, the fucking Coaster—is too much, and he goes for the desk that has the smallest line and most competent looking employees.

“Taking the scenic route?” the Alamo representative asks no one in particular, eyes on the computer screen. Nate stares at him. Maybe it’s just part of some greeting spiel they need to rattle off, he tells himself, but it’s inordinately grating.

“No. Probably not,” says Nate, and doesn’t really care if it makes sense.

 

In the airport bathroom, with the key in his grip, he looks at himself in the harsh fluorescent light—he’s wearing the Dartmouth Basketball sweatshirt his sophomore roommate left him, backpack slung over his shoulder. His hair isn’t worth the trouble to try to fix, and he leaves with the key to the Ford tight between his fingers.

Everything else, since landing, is measured in fifteen minute intervals. By eight he’s out of the airport proper and making his way from the rental lot, trying to navigate with the probably compromised GPS. Two counts later mark Solana Beach, which has no meaning to him, at least not yet; he realizes he should probably eat something by the forty-five minute mark, but that’s outside the scope of his immediate concern. He focuses on following the GPS, makes crisp turns where required, and adjusts the rearview mirror when his foot leaves the gas pedal.

By nine he’s cleared through the hospital parking lot. It’s a ridiculous coincidence that this backpack had the old wallet he’d put the military ID in. Nine-fifteen finds him in the gleaming white lobby. An abandoned wheelchair stares at him like a bad omen as he waits for the elevator, and he ignores it. It’s relatively easy to do; he’s been running on manic energy the entire way, and now he’s running on fumes, close to stalling, held in place by the wheelchair’s gaze until the elevator’s spate of people forces him between the doors. For once it’s not indecision that paralyzes him, nor desire; it’s the confrontation of reality, the fear of whatever admitted Brad here in the first place, and the familiar fear that he won’t be able to do anything about it.

The timer breaks down in the elevator. Nate allows himself a corner of space to try to stifle whatever is trying to escape from his throat. He doesn’t notice the marine who’s been patiently ignoring him until he says, “You all right, sir?”

“Uh, yeah,” says Nate, pawing at his face. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” the marine says, eyes trained onto the red numbers.

Nate continues to spend the fifteen seconds trying to get himself under control and praying that no one else comes into the elevator.

Before the doors open, the marine asks, “You need anything, sir?”

“No. No, thanks, I’m good. Thank you.”

 

511 nearly escapes his notice when he passes it in the hall. Once he doubles back, the doorway all at once looms over him. The ticking seconds come back into his head, along with a sense of battlefield calm, voices receding. Fifteen minutes ago, he reminds himself, he was in the parking lot; a fraction of those minutes ago, exactly one third, he had been waiting for the elevator. The next fifteen are approaching, waiting for him to step in; they’ll be over when they’re over. He takes a steadying breath before knocking softly and entering.

He’s greeted by a room full of marines in their cammies, faces indistinguishable, standing around a bed in which a very alive, albeit wan, Brad is sitting up and laughing at something. In Nate’s cursory assessment, the marines’ face dip into the uncanny valley, the scene arranged like mannequins.

One of the marines turns around, and Brad cranes his neck just enough to look at the doorway, where Nate is still standing and trying not to brace himself against the doorjamb.

“Shit,” escapes his tight lips.

No one says anything, but don’t otherwise look too concerned. Nate knows he’s suddenly thrust into tunnel vision, not because his scope is reduced to Brad, but precisely because it’s not; he’s suddenly left staring at the empty cup of tapioca pudding near the bed.

“Are you—are you okay?” is the only thing that comes to him as his eyes remain fixed on the fucking metallic wrapper. He snaps out of it by the time Brad speaks.

“Yes,” Brad says finally, and in some small, petty way, Nate is satisfied by the pause it took to process his presence. His wits return to him, though, as he sees the hospital bracelet encircling Brad’s thick, tanned wrist, and has to push out the thoughts of seeing Brad wasted away, lying back with his eyes closed against some paper pillow.

“I’m—how are you so nonchalant about this?” says Nate, edging closer to the bed, a little pissed now that emotions are coming back to him. He knows at least six pairs of eyes are trained on him and his disgusting plane-matted hair, the Dartmouth basketball sweatshirt, and all the other things he’s wearing, either on his body or his face, that tell them he doesn’t know what he’s doing here.

“Unruptured appendix,” Brad replies wryly. Now Nate notices that he’s sitting upright, half the covers flung off, and that he looks supremely uncomfortable in his hospital gown among the six young marines leaning against various surfaces in the room.

“The doctors said I’d live,” adds Brad, and the marines laugh.

Nate feels the color seep back into his face just as quickly as it had drained out before he stepped into the room. “Ray implied otherwise,” he manages. Maybe not; maybe it was Nate’s fault for misinterpreting those implications.

“I’m going to kill him,” says Brad, less evenly. Nate sees his fist clench and the hospital band pull tight around his wrist.

The door opens again, and the marine who was with Nate in the elevator comes in bearing styrofoam cups of coffee pinched between his fingers. He sees Nate first and stares. Nate doesn’t know where to look.

“You two know each other?” says Brad, watching the exchange.

“No,” says the marine, and then looks at Brad, who snorts. “Do you?”

“Yes.”

There’s an awkward silence while Nate runs a hand through his hair and still tries to understand what’s going on here—why Brad’s in the hospital bed, why it’s overcast but mild outside, why he’s here, standing in the middle of the room with people staring at him. He tries to recall the ticking, but in the attention trained on him it seems to disappear, replaced by familiar discomfort, impotence in a situation demanding action.

“All right, get out,” says Brad, finally feeling the weird charge in the room. For a paralyzing moment, Nate thinks he’s talking to him, but Brad continues, shifting against the backboard, “You’re tiring me out and according to Captain Fick here” —and Nate can feel the Marines shuffle— “I just had a near-death experience. You’ll either see me back on the blacktop or in the ground, so get out.”

They file out of the room, and Nate suddenly realizes he and Brad are alone, in a weird reversal of positions—he’s never been around to see Brad lying down when he wasn’t asleep, prone in this odd way. Brad seems to feel it, or something else, too, and pushes himself up in an abortive motion before Nate moves closer.

“Nate,” he says.

“Give me a minute.”

Nate gets in an appraising look at Brad; he looks fine, slightly pale, but otherwise whole. He moves toward the bed gingerly anyway, resting a hand on the plastic barrier. Brad’s fingers touch his.

The following motion is less of an embrace than a vise, fingers unexpectedly finding Brad’s cool skin at the open back of his hospital gown. They stay that way, Brad’s cold fingertips curled in the hood of the sweatshirt, until Nate trusts himself to part.

When they separate, Brad is rubbing his neck where Nate’s shoulder must have pressed on his windpipe.

“Nate,” he starts again, and Nate cuts him off.

“I hope you’re not planning a scene,” he says with more calm than he actually feels. “I’m already here, so—”

He’s interrupted by the entrance of the nurse who starts talking about a discharge before noticing something off, and asks, “Do you guys need a minute?”

“No,” says Nate. “Sorry,” and steps aside.

Fifteen minutes, he thinks.

“Jesus Christ, finally,” says Brad. “Can I get my things back?”

The nurse is fiddling with the charts at the edge of the bed, or the file she brought with her; Nate hadn’t noticed.

“He’s getting discharged?” Nate interjects. “Already?”

The nurse looks up. “It depends on whether the doctor determines he’s ready.”

He ignores her tone. “So he’s fine, then?”

She turns to Brad. “Is this an authorized visitor of yours, Sergeant Colbert?”

 _Authorized visitor_ , thinks Nate. Jesus.

“He’s fine,” says Brad, waving a hand and swinging his feet over the bed. “Can I leave now?”

“Not so fast.” The nurse comes over to his side, as though her five-foot frame could prevent him from getting up. “Dr. Bergen’s going to come in one more time and make sure everything looks good. We’ll also get you a prescription for some Vicodin.”

“Yeah, don’t need that.”

“Brad, just accept what’s being offered,” says Nate, unable to stop himself.

Brad and the nurse both turn to stare at him.

“I’ll wait in the lobby,” he understands, and escapes.

 

The coffee from the vending machine is unsurprisingly disgusting, and Nate dumps the saccharine mess in the trash after two sips. Still, he feels better here, waiting. As much as he hates it, this is what he’s good at. Crisis mode. He can handle this situation, as long as it’s not about him anymore; he lets go of the ticking enough to regain his grip on the situation.

It should bother him more how hard he’s struggling to hold himself together, but the adrenaline-tinged relief that surges through him leaves his knees weak. He’s not going to let it be replaced with the desire to kick himself in the ass for the flight here, and paces until he feels like the tremors have left his quads.

 

Nate catches Brad by the elevator, and Brad allows the silent walk until they get to the parking lot. Brad stops and looks around, as though he was led here without his knowledge.

“Let’s go,” says Nate.

“What? Where?”

“I’m driving you home.”

Brad snorts. “No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. You’re not allowed to drive and the doctor said you can’t have the motorcycle.”

It’s bright outside, not as cold as the chill Nate didn’t seem to feel in the morning. Brad follows him to the car, seemingly only out of habit, and halts by the driver’s side door. “I’m driving.”

“No, you’re not,” says Nate. “Just get in the car and stop fighting me.”

He shoulders past Brad and opens the door, getting in. Brad is still there, apparently looking over the roof of the car. “Unbelievable,” Nate mutters, exhausted, and only when he turns the key in the ignition does the passenger door open. Brad leans back and winces; Nate idles the motor, looking over at Brad, failing to find a comfortable position and trying to disguise it by fumbling with the seatbelt.

“Should we go back?” Nate asks, a hand on the gearshift, ready to park again.

“I’m fine,” Brad grunts.

Nate almost wants to ask if he detects an eye-roll, but it’s only noon and he’s already fucking tired.

 

The GPS gets Nate to the wrong entrance of Brad’s townhouse parking lot, and Brad’s terse directions are the only communication either of them have had since starting the drive.

“You live in an apartment complex with a pool,” Nate remarks, surprised. He shifts the car into park by the curb and looks around through the windows. It’s a row of low buildings stuck together, balconies enclosed by raffia screens. Stone steps lead into a courtyard beyond the metal gate.

“It’s a townhouse,” Brad says, getting out.

Nate follows and clicks the doors shut. “Townhouse.”

“Yes.”

“Near a beach?”

“We can’t all have Cape Cod,” says Brad, rattling the gate as he lets it slam shut. Nate wants to say that he didn’t mean it that way, that Brad only lived _near_ a beach and didn’t own one or some equally ridiculous Californian illusion, but as imagines Brad’s lonely apartment, he realizes he _is_ surprised.

Nate doesn’t know why. Maybe he’s just surprised at the sight of an empty apartment that isn’t his. Maybe it’s the sudden insight that something here feels distinctly amiss—that his own series of shitty, barren apartments were okay because he and everybody else had him convinced that he was just figuring out his life. Nate isn’t sure if it’s a surprise because Brad has his life figured out and this is how he wants it to be, or at least how it is. He doesn’t want to think that it all seems—meager, but he does. He can’t help it.

He follows Brad silently through Brad’s mundane homecoming trail: gate, mailroom, stone steps, all the while wondering if it’s residual fear from Brad’s imagined deathbed situation, or whether the suddenly clamminess was brought on by its opposite. The stability and its banality—it’s not that Nate thought Brad would be living in some tent on the beach, but it’s startling nevertheless.

 

“Well,” says Brad, opening the door and depositing his mail on the entryway table, “you can’t stay.”

The haze snaps, and it takes everything in Nate’s power not to gape. As soon as he manages, “What do you mean?” he mentally kicks himself for not telling Brad, “I know.”

“I have shit to do,” says Brad. He looks drawn, and his hand remains stiffly by his right side, as though he’s trying to control it frompressing against his flank.

Now Nate’s angry. “I _realize_ ,” he says, “that you have shit to do. It’s not like I didn’t have shit to do.”

He only realizes that he’s moved around furniture and is standing in the middle of Brad’s apartment when Brad speaks again. The calm in his voice belies nothing. “Then why are you here?”

“Are you serious?” says Nate. “Why were you in my fucking hospital room?”

Nate assumes Brad is going to shrug or turn away, but Brad only looks nonchalant as he sorts through his mail. “That was your decision.”

For a moment, Nate seriously considers punching him.

“You know what,” Nate says instead, “I can’t deal with this shit right now. You’re fucking welcome, you asshole.”

He tries to snatch the keys from where he thought he left them on the table by the door, but they’re not there. It takes several more seconds to claw through the couch cushions and his own pockets before he finds them, and another several seconds to endure what he thinks or imagines is Brad’s laughter before he slams the screen door.

 

Jamba Juice turns out to be his refuge as he drinks a smoothie he can’t taste, hopefully because it’s so watery and not because his tastebuds failed him in his rage. It’s been an hour, but the Jamba Juice may as well be a room in the hospital mess. It’s impossible to keep time; the previous day is so detached in the past or so far in the future that in retrospect it feels like deja vu, some kind of vision. It’s a conscious effort to condense his thoughts, enough to make him clench his fist around the styrofoam cup. He lets go when he feels the purple liquid seep through to his fingers. He throws it away and walks outside, scrubbing his hands through his hair. Fuck, he needs a haircut. Actually, he probably needs a drink.

 

He ends up driving up the I-5, thinking about exiting somewhere after Carlsbad to turn back to Brad’s and figure something out when he gets to the strip of freeway near Pendleton. Something makes him slow down enough for the Nissan behind him to start honking and swerve around him when he pulls onto the shoulder to look around. He flips on the emergency lights and carefully gets out of his rental, shielding his eyes with a hand. It’s the middle of the afternoon, sun hanging just above thin palm trees flanking the freeway. This is bad, he thinks, yellow light streaming through his fingers. This is worse than he thought. He doesn’t know if he’s actually standing here, looking at the sun above the glittering ocean, or if he’s just remembering all the other times he did so, driving by the coast.

 

When he pulls into the familiar Pier View Way, he parks behind the overpriced movie theater all the boots used to go to and steps out. The sun beats down on him as he ducks under an awning, looking at the Longboarder. Behind him, he knows, is the Haunted Head. The latter would probably look more kindly on him ordering a drink before five than would the Longboarder’s patio with, as far as he can count, six children under the age of eight. It feels a little weird not getting carded, probably the first time that he can remember that happening in Oceanside, and a small swell of victory follows as he gets a seat at the bar. Jesus Christ, he thinks, shaking off the feeling. This place is worse than his apartment, it’s a fucking wormhole.

The same kitschy pirate shit hangs from the ceiling and the chandeliers, defaced dollar bills lining the walls. It’s still only close to noon, and there’s someone on the second story balcony, fixing the lights above the bar. Nate slides onto the red vinyl stool. There’s a chihuahua in a pink harness sitting on the one next to him. The dog gives him a look.

“Say excuse me, Jimmy,” says his owner, a little too seriously. Jimmy the chihuahua simply turns away from Nate, who laughs. Fucking Oceanside.

“What can I get you?” asks the bartender, whose face Nate knows he’ll forget in two seconds. “If you hang out, happy hour’s on at four!”

“Uh, whiskey neat,” he says. He forgot there was a process to getting to the point where he had a drink in his hand.

“Really?” says the bartender, wiping her hands on the towel at her waist. “It’s a Wednesday! You don’t want something more interesting?”

He knows this calls for a laugh, but it doesn’t merit one. Jimmy the chihuahua doesn’t seem to think so either. “Can’t think of anything more interesting than whiskey.”

“What about an LA Water?” she asks.

He narrows his eyes. “Sounds a little suspect.”

“That’s the point,” she says. “Vodka, gin, rum, triple sec, some raspberry liqueur, and curacao. You in?”

“Jesus,” says Nate. “Sure.”

“Great,” she says. “Coming right up.”

There’s more of the first three ingredients in it than anything else, and the murky gray-blue liquid sears the back of his throat. He tips the bartender for not trying to talk to him.

 

After a few of the LA Waters, Oceanside starts looking alarmingly familiar—the constant specter of the pier, hazy and refracted in the distance, the slow trundle of cars down Mission Avenue. Out in the sunlight breaking suddenly between the clouds, Nate folds his fingers in the hair curling at the back of his neck.

 

“Be with you in a sec,” calls the hairdresser, without turning around. “I’m Candace, Kelly’s out for the day, her dumbass husband cut his finger off with a lawnmower or something.”

Nate’s eyes widen, but he sits down all the same and stares at the different hairstyles pasted or taped to the wall.

“All right,” he hears after a while, and looks up to see the hairdresser standing before him with a broom in her hands.

“You’re not drunk, are you?” she says, eyeing him suspiciously.

“No,” Nate lies, holding up his right hand. “Scout’s honor.”

“All right. Get in the chair.”

He climbs onto the ripped vinyl chair as she snaps the barber’s cape around him, and he closes his eyes.

“So,” she says, “did you come here for a nap or for a haircut?”

Jesus, Candace sounds like a staff NCO. He must really be drunk.

“Dude,” she says. “Hello?”

“Yeah, sorry,” says Nate.

“Medium-reg, high-reg, what? If you’re drunk, I’m gonna rip you off.”

“I’m not drunk,” says Nate. “Uh.”

“What are you, fresh out of Basic?” she asks.

“Captain,” rolls off his tongue, and it feels like butter.

“Right. If you don’t tell me anything else, I’m giving you a high-reg,” she says, tugging the clipper cord out of a drawer.

“Fine with me,” says Nate, and closes his eyes again. He only flashes them open for a moment to tell her, “Not a high-and-tight, though.”

“Excuse me,” she says over the whirr of the clippers, “I know the difference. How many years do you think I’ve been here? I’m a professional, Captain Morgan, and you smell like a bachelorette party.”

 

There’s a terrifying second of recognition outside, when Nate thinks he sees Pappy. By the time he figures out that it’s just some tourist with a moustache, he’s already behind the corner of the building down the block. Shit, he thinks. He forgot he wasn’t in the same Oceanside, as it was before the first time he was here. He’s not going to delude himself into thinking he’s some celebrity, but he’s aware someone might recognize him enough to start talking to him.

In the surplus store he wanders into, the bored cashier calls over the register, “You looking for ranks or what? There’s brass in the back.”

No, actually, he was looking at the chipped drywall somewhere between the ubiquitous Confederate caps and the East German uniform jackets that also seem a staple of surplus stores everywhere, but Nate clears his throat and moves on anyway. “I’m good,” he says, and the cashier goes back to flipping through a magazine.

On his way out, he pauses by the revolving rack of bumper stickers. He slowly turns it through the usual Vietnam service ribbons and thirty hackneyed iterations of the same ‘Navy’s men’s department’ joke. At least this store doesn’t carry those awful ‘His Boots, Her Flip-Flops’ abominations that were around when he was. His last push stops on some red and yellow mess screaming “I HAVE ONE OF THE FEW GOOD MEN” and then he sees: “MARINE GUNNERY SERGEANTS. GOD'S MOST EXCELLENT CREATION.” Nate doesn’t know why, but once he starts laughing he can’t stop—thinking of Wynn, or even Brad, maybe in a year. He chuckles his way to the register and slides the sticker over the counter.

“This you?” says the clerk, gesturing at the sticker, and Nate probably only imagines him eyeing his hairline.

“No,” says Nate, pulling out his wallet, and doesn’t know what possesses him to say, “Officer. But I can appreciate our NCOs.”

 

He goes out onto the beach to wait out the LA Waters, which still seem to have a curiously strong grip on him. Maybe he’s a lightweight, Nate thinks. The weather is hanging somewhere between the high sixties and low seventies, and, like Nate, can’t decide if it’s on the cooler or warmer side. The sand is just heated enough to avoid being damp, and Nate balls his sweatshirt up to create a pillow.

He wakes up to the Ruby’s sign flashing hazily in the distance above the water, held up by the spindly posts, and has no idea whether he’s still dreaming. The setting sun is directly in his eyes, and when he sits up to rub his face, he feels the basketball logo on his sweatshirt imprinted on his cheek. The air is sultry and he feels mildly hungover, at the stage where either more alcohol or more sleep is required.

It’s cliche, but he doesn’t quite understand where he is, or how he got onto the sunny beach; his mouth feels dry, as though fine sand had seeped in. He looks around at the sun glinting off the cars in the twelve dollar parking lot, the occasional family strolling down the concrete path by the beach. He’s pretty sure it’s still Friday, though he might be wrong; he saw darkness at some point in the last twelve hours. Sitting up slowly seems to right things on their axes, at least enough for him to get back to the townhouse as the last of the day’s light disappears below the horizon.

 

The metal gate is open when he arrives, but knocking on Brad’s front door, the one he hadn’t seen from the initial parking lot entrance, avails nothing, and Nate sits down on the dark steps when he realizes no one’s home.

Someone walks by with a golden retriever, activating the motion sensor light, and Nate gives a quick smile. They stop and Nate can tell they’re squinting at him, trying to make out his features.

“Hi,” he says.

“Brad?” asks the guy, pulling the golden retriever over.

“No,” says Nate, and damn it, now he has to get up. He walks over to the gate.

“Oh, sorry,” says the guy. “Thought it was Brad.”

“Me, too,” says Nate, and then backpedals. “Told me he’d leave his keys, but guess he forgot. I’m his cousin,” he adds, and doesn’t know why he feels he has to.

“Oh,” says the guy, reaching a hand over the fence, “I’m just down the street in 423. Mark. Yeah, Brad’s a great guy. Glad he’s back.”

“Yeah,” Nate agrees.

“You a marine, too?”

“Yes,” says Nate, without hesitation.

“So you from here, or just visiting?” he asks, and Nate gears up for a long conversation.

“Yeah. Just, uh—helping him move back in.”

“He back for good, or?”

“I don’t know,” says Nate.

“Yeah, the last time seemed pretty hard on him,” says Mark, scratching his dog’s ears, and Nate suddenly wants to snap at him. How the fuck would he know? He’s not sure what he’s more antagonized by, the civilian perspective or anyone’s close perspective on Brad, something he figures he’s always dreamed about having a monopoly on.

Instead, Nate offers an inviting, “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” says Mark. He shifts in his flip-flops. Jesus, _California_ , thinks Nate. But Mark continues, “He just seemed a little off. Dude loves dogs, so he pet-sits Mallard here for us sometimes, and he was just—I don’t know, quiet. You know?”

Nate nods, mostly wondering what kind of a freak names their dog ‘Mallard.’

“I’m from a military family, so it’s like, I kind of know the signs,” he says, and glances up. “Not like, PTSD signs or anything. Just regular post-deployment signs, I guess.”

“Cute dog,” Nate remarks before he says anything else, or asks another question.

Mark grins. “Oh, this old dude? Yeah, he’s pretty great. You got a dog?”

“No,” says Nate. “No space, no time.”

“Yeah. Brad seems like he wants a dog real bad, too, but I guess he just doesn’t have time either. He was gone for a long—”

He’s interrupted by the din of an engine and a single, blinding light pulling up to the curb. Mark raises a hand in greeting.

“There he is,” he says, and calls out, “My man!”

Two gloved hands take off a motorcycle helmet, and Brad’s face appears, yellow in the light. Nate half-expects him to shake his hair loose like those girls in the Harley commercials, and laughs. Either Mark and Brad don’t hear him, or they ignore him.

“My man,” Mark repeats as Brad walks up to him, helmet under his arm.

“My man,” echoes Brad, and pulls him into a back-slapping hug. He kneels down and coos unashamedly at the dog. “How’s my boy?”

“He misses you, dude.”

Brad’s still talking into the dog’s nose, letting him lick his hands and helmet and face. “How’s my buddy, Mal? Did you miss me?”

“Aw, don’t let him,” says Mark. “He’s gonna scratch up your helmet.”

Nate watches all of this with amusement until Brad straightens up with a grimace, and Nate is suddenly incensed by the fact that Brad took his motorcycle out on the second day after surgery.

“Your cousin’s cool,” says Mark. “See you around?”

“At least for a while,” Brad replies, and then looks at Nate. There’s an almost imperceptible moment of surprise as Brad’s eyes glance over his hairline, registering, before he says, “Ready, _cousin_?”

Nate just follows him silently into the townhouse and closes the door behind him.

“So what’s it going to be, Brad?” says Nate once they step back into the living room. “We’re going to keep showing up in places we’re not supposed to be to spite each other?”

“Is that why you’ve decided you’re here?” Brad asks.

“I don’t know, Brad,” says Nate, not bothering to keep the exasperation out of his voice. “Is that why you were in my hospital room?”

Brad shrugs. “You do like responsibility.”

Though the non sequitur will bother him later, Nate ignores Brad’s answer on principle and says, “I’m not falling for the ‘I was in the neighborhood’ act. Don’t act like it doesn’t fucking matter. You know why I’m here. I’ve told you a hundred times why I’m here, before I even fucking got here.” Nate knows by now he has to end everything with a question to goad a response out of Brad. “Why were you in Hanover?”

“I’m not allowed to be interested in the man, the myth, the bestselling author?”

“Oh, drop it,” snaps Nate. “Neither of us cares about the fucking book anymore, and if you actually do, I have greatly overestimated the respect I have for you.”

“Like I said, I have shit to do,” says Brad after a pause, turning the lights on in his kitchen. “When’s your flight leaving?”

That’s a good question. Nate should probably get on that. But he asks anyway, “When do you want me gone? Now?”

“I’m going up to Point Mugu tomorrow,” Brad says, opening and closing a cabinet.

“What is that supposed to tell me?”

“Isn’t that _your_ job?” asks Brad.

“What?” Nate follows him into the kitchen, and doesn’t know why he feels so comfortable doing it. He’s usually awkward in people’s houses. It’s probably because this place feels like just another anonymous space, the walls white and bare like a hotel room.

“All right,” says Nate. “Hold on. Why the fuck am _I_ the one that’s acting fucking guilty and inventing apologies when you—I mean, what do I even start with, at this point? When you told me my book was shit?”

“That wasn’t the point.”

“Oh, but it was one of the points?” says Nate, and then stops mid-sentence. A plastic pumpkin is holding a closet door open, and once he sees it, it seems like other things start appearing out of the pale blur that is the rest of Brad’s apartment: an garish throw blanket across the back of the couch, a key hook in the shape of a fish tacked to the wall by the door that looks like nothing Brad would ever buy—a _tiki doll_. Nate half-waits for the door to open behind him.

“Does someone else live here?” he asks slowly, a hand on the cool wood of the dining room table.

Brad is probably looking at him, and Nate knows this because his eyes are on Brad’s face, but he can’t see him. He feels his insides grow hot. “Brad,” he says, and this—this, he thinks frantically, this is—

Brad interrupts. “I sublet the place,” he says, looking at him oddly, and Nate realizes he’s making himself look like an idiot. After all, what did he expect? What was he going to ask Brad next? Who else are you not-fucking and not-talking to while I’m not-and-never-was here?

“Nate,” Brad says, and Nate’s attention snaps back to where he’s standing behind the kitchen counter.

“Do you want to do this right now?” he says.

Nate thinks about it and looks around at the meaningless kitsch apparently left behind by the subletters. If “this” is what he’s afraid it is, then no. He doesn’t ever want to do it.

“No,” Nate replies quietly.

“When does your flight leave?” Brad repeats.

“Tell me to get a hotel,” says Nate. “Tell me and I swear I’ll go. I’m not here to fucking inconvenience you.”

Brad doesn’t say anything, so Nate doesn’t go. Instead, he stands awkwardly in the kitchen, a hand on the white formica counter, as he hears Brad changing in his bedroom, the faucet being turned on and off, the rustling of a towel being placed back on the rack. Nate cranes his neck briefly to investigate what’s in the brown bag Brad placed on the table—CVS. Shit, the prescription. Nate should have remembered that on the way back here, the first time. Brad reappears, looking softer, a faded black long sleeve stretched across his chest. He’s wearing board shorts, and Nate wants to laugh, incredulous that he’s lived long enough to see Brad in anything striped and emblazoned with the Billabong logo down the side.

“You want steak, or do you only eat hormone-free nuts and seeds now?”

“Steak’s fine,” Nate says, too exhausted to make any other reply. Brad pads off to inspect the stovetop, and Nate drops himself onto the sterile couch. It’s almost comfortable, but oddly square, precise. The coffee table, too, is bare, glowing under the fluorescent lights overhead. Brad is making muted noise in the kitchen, and Nate is suddenly hit with the bizarre certainty that if there was music playing, he might have cried. As it is, there’s only the purposeful bustle of Brad in the kitchen, the distant hum of the highway, the occasional rumble of a car directly outside the building, and the completely imagined boom of the surf, far away. He concludes it’s just exhaustion.

The whites and grays of the room start to blur, Nate’s head on the elbow propped up against the couch, and he wakes up with his face against the waffle material, Brad standing over him. Nate is muzzy, and reaches out to take Brad’s wrist to steady himself somehow.

Brad only looks down at their joined hands and asks, “You still hungry?”

“Yeah,” says Nate, letting go. He sits up and rubs his face. At least his stomach feels hollow, even if he doesn’t recognize the feeling of actually wanting food.

“Come on,” says Brad, offering him a hand. “Food’s ready.”

By the time Nate rises and goes to the bathroom to splash water on his face, Brad has poked his head out on the balcony.

“Too cold outside,” says Brad, sliding the door shut. “Let me see if they have the heaters on the patio.”

 

The patio itself and its metal furniture is frigid, and Nate bunches as much of his jeans under his ass as he can. The air, dense with impending rain, settles heavily on the green umbrella above their heads. There’s the questionable possibility the polyester might combust from the proximity of the heat lamps, but the air is wet enough to assuage Nate’s misplaced concern. The sky beyond the swaying cypruses that flank the patio is a deep blue, but the stars aren’t out yet. Steady, low light coming from the lamp over them casts Brad’s face in warmth, creating shadows in the lines and creases. Nate is suffused with an infinitely better version of what he felt in the hospital room, and he’s relieved to find that it’s still there.

It’s more than a little odd, sitting here with each other like they’re on vacation, some spontaneous honeymoon—as though they weren’t shouting at each other an hour prior, or a month prior.

“You didn’t tell me you could cook,” says Nate, trying to fill the silence. Too cold and too late and too dark for any other residents to be having dinner on the patio. “And I let you eat my disgusting pasta.”

He wasn’t sure if he should bring that up, but Brad only shrugs. “It’s a necessity, not a hobby.”

“The other day my lunch at the office was a piece of deli meat with mustard on it,” Nate tells him. He flattens a potato with his fork. “So I don’t know.”

“If there was bread involved, that’s a sandwich.”

“There was no bread.”

“In that case,” says Brad, and raises his eyebrows, looking away.

“Where’s the—Point?” Nate remembers.

“NAS Point Mugu,” says Brad, cutting his steak. “North of LA.”

Nate parses the acronym. “A Navy base?”

“Yeah. They’re sending me up there.”

“For what?”

Brad looks at him wryly.

“You’d tell me, but then you’d have to kill me?” guesses Nate.

Brad smirks. “Precisely. It’s a little past the time I could tell you things.”

The words don’t cut him like they could, but Nate still wonders if it’s the words themselves or Brad’s voice that stings.

“I’ll come with you.”

Brad looks at him. “It’s a three hour drive. Minimum, in the ideal traffic situation.”

“And?” says Nate, noting the lack of—or at least demotion—of any other concern. “I’ve got literally nothing else to do here.” They’re not going to discuss that yet. “And you’re injured.”

“It’s not an injury,” Brad says, and then adds, You’re not my chauffeur.”

“No,” agrees Nate, “not until you pay me.”

Brad is looking at his plate, moving nothing around with his fork. “You’re not driving.”

“What was the plan? Riding your motorcycle up there, on the highway, right after your surgery?”

“I don’t see how the seat of my bike will aggravate it any more than a car.”

“I do,” says Nate, and Brad is quiet.

“And on Vicodin?” Nate remembers, two pieces of steak later. “Yeah, right. Were you going to do that?”

“I wasn’t going to take Vicodin anyway, mom, but thanks for checking in.” Brad gives him a two-finger salute and grabs the A-1.

 

When they trudge back up the stone steps and deposit their dishes in the sink, Nate finds ice cream in the freezer. He can’t keep the surprise out of his announcement.

“What, you thought I only ate raw meat?” says Brad, washing his hands. “Are you surprised I have utensils, too?”

Nate laughs.

“I have to keep something for people like you.”

Nate is a little bothered by the statement and the implication of others who might also eat Brad’s ice cream, but taps out a scoop of mint chip against the rim of the bowl.

Brad is leaning against the kitchen sink, watching Nate eat the ice cream slowly.

“You want?” asks Nate, holding out a spoon. Brad watches him until Nate says softly, “Before it drips, Brad.”

Brad just shakes his head. His arms are crossed against his broad chest, pulling the shirt tight. “Who would’ve thought I’d see the LT eating Rocky Road in jeans and a t-shirt?”

Nate cocks his head at him. “It’s not the most unimaginable thing that’s happened.” _So far, at least_ , he means to say.

“I guess not,” is Brad’s quiet response.

“I take it you’re no longer angry?” is the only thing Nate can think to say.

“I wasn’t angry, Nate.”

“No,” agrees Nate, chewing through a frozen chunk of chocolate, “you were pissed.”

“Well, I’m not,” says Brad. “I don’t think that’s ever been the case.”

“Right,” says Nate. The ice cream hits the sensitive molar, and he puts the bowl down, grimacing.

“I don’t like seeing you in situations that don’t do you any good.”

Nate’s not sure what situations Brad is referring to; there are too many options, and they all sound wrong to him. He doesn’t know if it’s the ice cream numbing his mouth reaching his brain, or if the time difference is so drastic, but he finds he’s suddenly so sleepy he can barely make out what Brad’s saying. “You don’t like me in a lot of situations.”

“Not what I said,” said Brad, taking the bowl out of his hands. “Let’s go to bed.”

Nate knows exactly what he’s doing when he starts fussing with the blanket on the couch, and he stops when Brad catches him. “Little too much history for that,” Brad intones, cocking his head.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Nate, gathering up the blanket. “I’m—”

“Don’t play dumb,” Brad growls, and Nate is powerless to resist.

 

When they’re in the bed together, at Brad’s de facto invitation, Nate is suddenly so fucking hard he can’t think straight. He waits a few seconds before he feels the bed shift and doesn’t check to see the reason for the motion, just turns over and shoves a leg between both of Brad’s.

“Oh, God,” he moans, as Brad opens his mouth is at his neck. It seems as though Brad was there before Nate even thought about it, reached out. “Fuck.”

Brad covers Nate’s lips with his own and swallows Nate’s resounding _yes_ as he grabs Nate’s flank, hard.

“Fuck,” says Nate, wanting to rub his face but unable to keep his hands away from Brad’s taut stomach, his chest. “Sorry, sorry, I don’t know why I’m fucking like this—I’ll stop—”

“Don’t fucking dare,” Brad growls, grabbing his wrists, and pulls him down again. Nate spares a fleeting, insincere thought that perhaps this is a bad idea before ignoring thoughts completely.

The heat and faint background noise of their lips separating and joining is broken by Brad’s abrupt turn of head.

“Shit,” he says, and Nate’s hand immediately goes to graze Brad’s side.

“Is it the—” and Nate can’t bring himself to say the appropriate word here:  _wound_. “Scar—stitches?”

“Yeah,” Brad mutters. “Don’t—don’t touch it.”

“Sorry,” says Nate, rolling off of him and trying to restrain himself from hiking up Brad’s shirt and inspecting it. He counts three seconds before saying, “Brad? Do you want—”

Brad’s clear, light eyes, somehow visible in the dark, are trained on him with an unreadable expression. “No. It’s fine. Fuck it. Come here,” and pulls Nate’s mouth back onto his.

 

“How do you want this?” Brad grunts at him, hands gripping his shoulders.

“I don’t know,” says Nate, panting. He’s staring up at Brad’s closed-off face, beautiful and arousing, and God, it’s the same one he’s seen in Iraq, and England, and all of the airports they’ve met in or thought about meeting in, and Brad’s sudden presence and refusal to admit to anything terrifies and enrages him. Nate doesn’t despise himself for the emotion, or anything as stupid, but something vindictive and foreign in him compels him to say, “I don’t fuck around.”

“Neither do I,” returns Brad, confusion evident through the haze of arousal.

“Not with guys, you don’t,” Nate corrects. Now he’s not quite sure if it was wild lust or some other unbridled emotion—lust masquerading as rage, or the reverse.  “Who knows what else you do.”

“Who knows,” Brad agrees, and seems to decide on a better, more laconic course of action. His hands push Nate’s shoulders down into the mattress. “Grab the headboard.”

It hurt like hell last time, Nate doesn’t tell him. It feels better, _good_ , this time—maybe not objectively, but there’s enough to distract Nate from the sensation of pain. There’s some overarching other emotion, no longer identifiable as anger; it seems like release, relief, something greater than that. He lets go of the headboard and clutches Brad’s biceps, moving down to cover the hand that’s pressing down on his chest.

Wind is rattling something outside, and Nate’s pretty sure his feet are cold. Brad is moving above him, against him, inside him, and his eyes are closed, or looking away.

“Brad,” he says, feeling his neck tense up as he’s pushed farther up the bed, into the headboard, with the motion of Brad’s thrusts.

Brad only manages a grunt, and that’s not what Nate wants. There’s sweat running into his eyes, stinging, but he keeps them open to look at Brad’s straining face. Nate doesn’t have to say it; Brad leans down to kiss him again, slowly, unable to keep up different paces between their lips and thighs. A hand slips between the mattress and Nate’s back, and another against Nate’s cheek, into his hair. The anger slides from him, and Nate stops the constant stream of observations.

 

In the few minutes that follow—what feels like more an aftermath than an afterglow—Brad is panting, an arm thrown over his eyes.

“Fuck, that was good,” says Nate, filter weak with exhaustion. He suddenly remembers the stitches, and sits up.

“What?” says Brad, lolling his head towards Nate.

“I’m pretty sure that counted as strenuous activity.”

Brad nods, licking his lips. “There’ve been Thai whores in arguably worse physical condition.” He cracks open an eye. “Me being the one in that condition.”

This triggers an uncomfortable connection within Nate, and he figures he can ask, since it’s his concern now, too—or at least he wants it to be, to have that assumption confirmed and validated.

“Isn’t that—dangerous?” he asks.

“What is?”

“Prostitutes,” says Nate, and is proud of not blushing.

“Well, if I did have something it’d be too late now.” It’s imparted with irritating nonchalance, irritating in its transparency. “Why?”

“What do you mean, why?” asks Nate, though he doesn’t really know. This question is just the painful means to an end, another question.

“You have to be careful,” says Brad, rather callously. “Do you do this with everyone you meet?”

Nate bristles. “No.” _No one_ , he thinks Brad understands.

“I meant this verbal exam.”

Nate ignores that. “Do you?”

“No,” says Brad, and it sounds more like _not everyone_ rather than _no one_. “Anyway, if you’re concerned—I’m careful. I always check.”

“I just don’t understand—why,” says Nate. He hopes the “needs” argument doesn’t come out, because he has a ridiculous proposed solution on the tip of his tongue.

Brad’s answer doesn’t surprise him. “I like to leave everything in the hands of professionals.”

“Jesus Christ,” says Nate. “You are such an asshole.”

He expects Brad to ignore this, or to throw a pacifying hand over him and go to sleep.

“Oh, yeah?” Brad says instead, sitting up, sheets not soft enough to pool around his waist, where they bunch together inelegantly. Nate finds that he’s surprised. For all of his Iceman exterior, he realizes Brad has been relatively passive. “And what are you? Some kind of fucking saint? Wining and dining DC’s finest trust fund dispensaries is so much more _elevated_?”

Nate stops. “Brad,” he says, “I haven't fucking _looked_ at anyone in a year. I barely look at myself in the fucking mirror—”

Chirping outside the window startles him. Of course the birds in California would chirp at two in the morning. It adds to the grand irrationality of the entire scene: the birds chirping outside of the window of the bungalow in which he and Brad are sitting up, AC on too low, wondering what each other means to say. Brad seems to be waiting for something to end the thought.

Well, thinks Nate, there’s nothing to punctuate it with. I’m an idiot, but that’s nothing new. A celibate idiot, apparently, but come on—that hasn’t been new since college; at least since their first libo, since Afghanistan. The urge to kiss Brad suddenly possesses him, as it seems to whenever Brad’s near, and Nate gives in. Judging by Brad’s body, softening and pressing against him, it was an acceptable decision. It feels like a victory.

He almost waits for Brad to add _me neither_ , but he doesn’t, and strangely it’s enough for Nate that he can imagine an _okay_ in the silence’s stead.

“I really hope we didn’t rupture anything,” Nate says, on the verge of falling asleep.

Brad, also lingering near sleep, just mumbles something back about finding out tomorrow. Nate watches the motion sensor lights by the window flick on and off at random intervals, and finally succumbs.

: : :

Morning seems to come fifteen minutes later. Brad is peering at him in the glow of the bedside lamp, a hand on Nate’s limp arm. It’s dark outside, beyond the blinds.

“I’d give you a better greeting if I wasn’t afraid you’d punch me.”

“Feel like punching anyway,” Nate mutters, rolling over to look at the clock’s red numbers. It’s 4:30 am. He’s so tired he can’t even manage to curl his fingers around Brad’s wrist in return.

He’s slowly aware that Brad is stroking his short hair, hand brushing across his forehead. Nate closes his eyes again.

“You’re tired,” Brad tells him, voice soft.

Nate nods, not sure what he’s agreeing to. The comforter is warm around him, and even Brad’s plank of an IKEA mattress feels good, buoyant, against his body.

“You don’t have to go,” says Brad, rolling off the bed.

That jolts Nate into action, and he sits up to stretch before Brad changes his mind. The ache between his legs is sobering, but not entirely unpleasant. “I’m up. Once I’m up, I’m up.”

Still weak with sleep, he slumps back against the pillows, blinking away cloudiness. There’s no deluge of blood on the sheets, so he assumes Brad’s stitches are fine. He feels better, waking up; there’s no more need for portioning out his minutes, at least.

“You’re weirdly a morning person,” Nate comments eventually, watching Brad move about with undue sprightliness.

“If I want to get down to the beach in the morning, this is the only time,” Brad replies, pulling on sweatpants.

“No cammies?”

Brad throws him a look. “That comes after coffee.”

“I hear the new woodland camo’s great for hiding stains.”

“Yeah?” says Brad, moving around in the bathroom. “And who’d you hear that from?”

Nate isn’t sure if he resents that or not, or whether it merits an answer, but says anyway, “I read, Brad.”

He gets up to strip off the shirt he had pulled on in the middle of the night and gets a low whistle.

“What?” says Nate, twisting around with the sleeves halfway up his arms. He barely has time to catch the bottle of lotion when Brad tosses it to him.

“Oh, Jesus,” Nate says when he gets a look at the red strip of skin at his waist.

“ _How_ did you get that?” Brad asks. He’s squeezing out toothpaste.

“Shirt rode up, I guess,” Nate says, grimacing when he presses two fingers to it. He looks up. “Fell asleep on the beautiful shores of Oceanside yesterday.”

Brad barks a laugh and mumbles through the foam, “Almost like first libo.”

“For some people.”

Brad waits until the sand timer runs out and the water turns off to tell him, “As long as you didn’t sit on a needle, I’d say it was a successful outing.”

“I won’t have you impugning the beautiful shores of Oceanside,” Nate says, but is derailed by Brad taking off his shirt. Fuck, the back monstrosity is ugly. Appealing—not attractive, necessarily—in an idiosyncratic way that makes people want to adopt ugly dogs, but nevertheless ugly. Something else on Brad’s skin distracts him.

“New tattoo,” he notices.

Brad makes a noise of agreement, rifling around in his dresser. It’s on the back of his bicep this time, rippling when Brad shoves the drawer closed. “Is the point not having to ever look at them?” Nate asks.

“What?”

“The placement,” Nate indicates.

“I can see it fine in the mirror.”

Nate moves to inspect it more closely, squinting. It’s a simple skull, Nate sees now, as he holds Brad’s arm and moves it gently. “You know, Brad, you may be the only person in the Corps to have this tattoo.”

That gets Nate a smirk. “Why?” Nate asks, fingers still on Brad’s arm.

Brad shrugs. “Don’t know. Just felt like it. Alcohol may have been involved.”

“Memento mori, huh?”

“Come on, Captain, you have to have something better than that,” says Brad. He moves past Nate, tapping his temple. “Too primitive.”

Sometimes Nate wonders if this wasn’t his real reason for taking classics, and the requisite Latin—to have a handy phrase for essays and very few other occasions. He thinks of all the ancient bon mots he had learned, something appropriate for Brad, and manages, “Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo?”

“‘I was, I wasn’t,’” says Brad, “and that’s about all my español gets me.”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Nate replies, “and then it’s, ‘I am not, I don’t care.’”

“And you think that’s better for me?” asks Brad, after a barely noticeable pause.

“I mean, it’s a little morbid, but your—”

“I care.” Brad returns to the bedroom to throw him a shirt. It lands on Nate’s shoulder, and he clutches it in confusion.

“Clean,” says Brad. “You can take another one, obviously. Sweaters on the bottom, pants in the closet.” When Nate continues to look at him, Brad raises an eyebrow. “Or did you pack?”

“No, just—thanks,” says Nate. Brad leaves to turn off the coffee timer, judging from the sound, and Nate looks down at the shirt. It’s worn, faded indigo going turquoise at the edges of the long sleeves. ASYLUM SURF. OCEANSIDE CALIFORNIA.

“Will this be enough?” Nate calls to Brad in the kitchen.

“Yeah. Shouldn’t get too cold.”

Nate forgoes Brad’s jeans for his own, and goes to brush his teeth.

 

When he’s finished in the bathroom, Brad’s frowning as he listens to Fox & Friends coming from the living room, finishing the last of his coffee from an ANGELO’S mug. Wordlessly, Nate refills it.

“Thanks,” say Brad, clapping his shoulder as Nate sits down beside him. His hand lingers, and Nate turns to press their lips together. The action is absurd in its domesticity, but Brad allows it, fingers still clutching the handle of the mug and then moving up to move through Nate’s short hair. When they break apart, Brad looks a little stunned.

“You could’ve spilled that,” says Nate, turning to the counter to hide a grin.

“The haircut,” Brad says, shaking his head in mock disbelief, though it looks more to Nate like he’s shaking himself out of a haze. “Why?”

“Don’t get drunk in Oceanside,” is Nate’s answer. It’s half-true.

“That must be the officer version of the phrase,” Brad responds. “Last time I was drunk in Oceanside, things went worse than a bad haircut.”

Nate wants to ask, but— “ _Bad_?”

“As nostalgic as it is,” says Brad, an arm across the back of Nate’s chair, “I think I liked the Capitol Hill peon look better.”

“Really?”

Brad stands up, stretching, and places the mug in the sink. Nate almost rises to go scrape the ice off of the car when he sees it in the window, the Taurus waiting placidly for them at the base of the streetlamp.

In the living room, Steve Doocy is telling them something about Pioneer 10. “The final attempt at contact with the spacecraft was made yesterday evening, the last time the antenna would be correctly aligned with Earth enough to receive a transmission. No response was received—the craft had lost electric power for its radio around three years ago, so that’s a wrap for the Pioneer 10, who’s still out there somewhere in deep space. Happy trails, Pioneer.”

Nate loses the last bit in the clatter of Brad washing the mug.

“Kind of weird, huh?” Steve asks Nate, who doesn’t even like him. Nate shrugs and goes to wait on the couch, flicking off the TV. When Brad steps out, adjusting the utility cover on his head, Nate can’t help but stare, rendered speechless a second time.

“What? Is it the woodland shit or the sleeves?” Brad asks, tying up his laces.

“Yes,” says Nate. “Both. This is a little surreal.”

Brad laughs. “I would’ve thought it was as real as it gets.”

Nate can’t explain, and Brad just says, “After you, Captain.”

 

When they get in the car, Nate is suddenly possessed by the urge to say, “Does it ever freak you out?”

“What?” says Brad, gingerly closing the passenger door. The motion detector light above Brad’s doorway snaps off, and Nate has to fumble around with the TomTom in the predawn darkness.

“They say we’re going to have all this new technology and people are going to live in space.”

Brad stares at him. “ _They_? Nate.”

“I’m serious.”

“And? Is this your manifest anxiety over the Pioneer 10 communication failure?”

Nate ignores him. “We won’t get to see any of that. We’re the interim generation.”

Tugging on his seatbelt, Brad asks, “Are we a generation?”

“Oh, please.”

“You’re _oh, please_ -ing me?” says Brad, incredulous. “You just started rambling about aliens. You’ve become one of those tin-hat wearing lunatics in your advanced age. Retirement. Fire up the GPS technology, Captain.”

Nate rolls his eyes. Brad reassures him, “We’ll always have TomTom,” before leaning his head against the window.

 

Brad jolts awake in the passenger seat after an hour and a half of Nate’s heretofore relatively smooth driving. “Jesus,” he says. “Come up easy.”

“Sorry,” says Nate, correcting himself after a swerve around an errant Acura. “This asshole—”

“Oh, fucking Long Beach,” observes Brad, without much heat. “I dreamed we were already beyond it. Wait until we get into LA.” His eyes close again briefly before he looks over. “Let me take over.”

“I’m fine,” Nate mutters, concerned with the Acura’s progress weaving in and out of the lanes ahead of him. The short-lived intention of calling the police—or worse, following—enters his head. The Acura’s brake lights flash.

“Nate.”

“What?”

“Let me drive.”

“No,” says Nate. “It’s one car.”

After a few more seconds of keeping his eyes shut, Brad sits up, apparently fully awake. He crosses his arms and looks out through the window. “Probably should’ve taken the 5 all the way up,” he mutters. “This way we’ll be stuck on the 405.”

“I thought we did take the 5?” says Nate, confused and not particularly gratified by what Brad probably thinks is necessary vigilance.

“You merged onto the 405 at some point. Or at least I hope you did.” Brad raises his eyebrows.

Nate silently reads the signs in the slowly undimming light. Costa Mesa. Fountain Valley. Huntington Beach. He catches the lights illuminating the signs turning off, and feels a strange moment flit past. Brad sits besides him, impassive, pupils tracking the cars in front of them.

“And this is LA,” says Brad when Nate slows to a stop on the freeway, under the sign indicating the lanes for the 105 and 405. “Fucking LAX.”

Nate is silent for several miles until he feels forced to pronounce, “This is kind of bullshit. Coming from someone who’s sat in DC street traffic.”

“Fuck it,” says Brad suddenly. “Take the 10.”

Nate perks up from where he’s staring at the lines and lines of cars in front of him. “What? Why is that a ‘fuck it’ decision?” he asks, looking ahead on the GPS and squinting. “Aren’t we doing that anyway? Wait. The 101?”

Near Exit 53B, Brad commands, “Merge.”

“What?” says Nate, instinctively hitting the brakes and reaching out a hand to steady the GPS.

“Exit here,” directs Brad. “Merge, on your three. Take Exit 53B.”

When they’re on the admittedly—though only slightly—freer road, Nate asks, “What was that for?”

Brad settles back into the seat. “There’ll be traffic either way. Might as well show you the better parts of California. This way we’ll get onto PCH. Turn when you see that.”

“See what?”

“Pacific Coast Highway,” says Brad and then says, mostly to himself, “Could’ve taken that up here. Probably worse traffic though.”

They pass state parks and beaches, catching glimpses of the breakers pounding the sand. Nate notices Brad staring longingly out at the camper vans parked along the highway, and laughs.

Brad turns to fix him with a quizzical look.

“Nothing,” says Nate.

“PCH up here,” Brad tells him, “the only redeeming part of LA.”

It’s not odd, working—functioning, he thinks—with Brad again. Nate doesn’t know why he’d even thought of it that way, in that brief moment. There’s something satisfying in the directions, the push-and-pull of even the blundering decisions they have to make, Nate at the wheel and Brad beside him. Brad isn’t used to giving directions, given the way he keeps moving forward and twitching his hand towards an imaginary gearshift every time the car lurches a little; it’s oddly satisfying to Nate and, he thinks, maybe to both of them. He doesn’t dwell on it beyond looking for the correct exit.

 

“They won’t let you drive in,” says Brad when Nate pulls up, “but here’s fine.”

Nate must look hesitant, because Brad snorts and says, “There’s a guard shack right there,” pointing to the red and white entrance barrier.

“Have a good day at work, honey,” says Nate, because he can.

Brad snorts. “Don’t burn the roast, sweetheart,” he says, and slams the door to peer through the window. “See you later.”

For some reason, he’s struck by the compulsion to ask, “What did you mean when you said, last night—about responsibility?”

“What?” Brad looks impatient, shifting. Nate doesn’t know why he decided this was the most opportune time to bring it up.

“Never mind.”

Nate moves to shift out of park, and Brad stops him. “Wait.”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks,” is all Brad says, and straightens up. Nate watches him fix his cover and walk towards the guard shack before shifting the car into reverse.

 

Halfway down the drive from the base, Nate realizes he doesn’t have a destination. The GPS tells him he’s in Oxnard, but he doesn’t really feel like exploring a city he knows nothing about, or driving down to LA. He’ll wait for Brad to do that—if they do that.

Aside from the nap on the couch and the few hours last night, he calculates he hasn’t slept in nearly forty-eight hours, and feels himself running low, eyelids getting heavy. He drives slowly along empty weekday residential roads for a little while longer, contemplating his next move before he hits a main road and is forced to act. It’s too hot and too suspicious to sleep in the car, and finding a no-tell room for two hours is absurd. His next turn comes up on a busier avenue, and he takes a right turn into a shopping plaza, quiet this early on a Friday morning. He wanders around before heading towards the doors of the movie theater.

The next ten minutes is spent looking at the showings and trying to judge the quietest one. By the time he comes up to the attendant, he fortunately stops himself from asking which movie would have the least people. There’s no one behind him in line at nine-fifteen, so he leans his elbows on the counter and looks up at the small white letters against the black letterboard.

He ignores _Annapolis_ and asks, “What’s _Eight Below_?” Sounds like some bleak arthouse feature, maybe with snow and a lot of quiet.

“It’s about dogs,” says the bored attendant, snapping her gum.

Nate looks up. “What?”

“Like, snow dogs? In Alaska?”

“Is it, uh—fast-paced?” says Nate.

“I guess?” says the attendant.

Jesus, he thinks, if you don’t want to be here at two in the afternoon, get your fucking GED.

“All right,” he finally decides. “Ticket to _Silent Hill_.” If it’s silent as advertised, and about hills, he can deal.

“That’s not on until twelve-ten.”

What is it with these weird show times? He’s not going to wait until twelve seconds past 4:03. Damn it, Nate thinks. He should have brought his glasses. Yet another thing he forgot in his empty rucksack. Good thing he brought a fucking stale bagel and his glasses case. He’s kind of impressed that he even remembered his wallet as he fingers it in his pocket, squinting at the letters.

“All right,” he says. “ _The Departed_ it is, then.”

 

By the time the teenage usher wakes him up, it’s nearing four. Nate starts and immediately checks his watch.

“Thanks,” he says, wiping his mouth and bracing himself against the upholstered armrests. The kid’s still looking at him.

“Can I help you?” Nate asks, straightening up where he’s sprawled in the seat.

“Nothing,” the kid says, and quickly amends, “I mean, no. Just checking if you’re, like, alive.”

“Yes,” says Nate, nodding slowly. “Thanks. Pretty alive.”

“Just,” the kid starts, leaning on his broom and Jesus, Nate doesn’t need a dialogue here, “how did you, like, sleep through that? That shit’s so crazy.”

“I’ve seen worse,” Nate says automatically, and rises from the seat. He thanks the usher again for no reason, and leaves with the kid staring after him.

 

Once he’s outside, sneezing at the sunlight, he texts Brad. His phone starts ringing five minutes later, when he’s idling the motor at the mouth of the Carl’s Jr. drive through.

“Yeah?”

“You can come get me now.”

Nate laughs. “Yes, sir.”

“I think I just felt my hair stand up with that phrase,” says Brad. “See you soon.”

 

Brad digs the ticket out of the cupholder and smooths it out. “ _The Departed_? Since when are you a fan of shit like that?”

Nate glances in the rearview mirror. He shrugs. “I don’t know. Just picked a dark room to pass out in,” he says, and notices the look Brad gives him. “What’s it about?”

“Matt Damon,” Brad replies, lobbing the crumpled paper into the windshield and watching it bounce off.

That might have explained the teenager’s reaction, Nate thinks. Brad is still looking at him, and Nate feels obliged to say something in his defense. “I’m just tired, Brad. Layovers are unkind.”

“I told you I didn’t want you to drive.”

“I’m better,” says Nate, and he’s not sure why he sounds like he’s trying to convince someone. “Tired, but better.”

“We’re talking about you not sleeping.”

“I know.”

“Sometimes you’re just not equipped to deal with the exhaustion,” says Brad, and it feels like a thinly veiled dig, or worse, some half-assed probe for information.

“I was equipped in Iraq.”

“Were you?”

Something flares up inside Nate, but he pushes it down. “Why do you keep saying cryptic shit? You seemed to believe it when you were there.”

“It’s just a question,” Brad says evenly. “You know I put more faith in you than in anything else,” and then adds, “Out there.”

“Faith or trust?”

Brad doesn’t answer, at that least not that question. After a few minutes of maneuvering out of the base, most which Nate spends swearing under his breath, Brad asks, “So what’d you do, sample the wonders of Ventura County?”

“Uh,” says Nate, “most of your productive workday was spent passed out in the theater.”

“It’s early still,” Brad comments as Nate carefully pulls out onto PCH.

Nate glances over; Brad is impassive, watching the shrubbery streak by the window. “Yeah?” he prompts.

“Don’t know LA that well,” Brad tells him. “But if there’s anything you want to check off the list...”

It’s been a while since anything like it has been relevant, thinks Nate, but it’s something. “The Getty Villa’s open.”

 

Brad instructs him to pull over at a 7-11 and Nate’s eyes follow him through the car mirrors into the store. Brad is tugging on the zipper of his duffel bag when he steps out, clad in chinos and a long-sleeve. He throws a packet of tropical Skittles at Nate once he shoves the bag between the backseat.

“Thanks,” says Nate, smiling. He has to ask. “Lucky guess?”

“What was?”

Apparently it was. Nate waves the Skittles, which Gunny always traded him for the gummy pound cake.

“I guess you’ll never know,” says Brad, smirking. “You hungry?”

Yes, actually, but—“If that question is leading into gas station MREs, the answer’s a firm no.”

Brad just laughs. “We’ll figure something out,” he says, twisting around to dig a pair of aviators out of the bag and perch them on his head. “I’ve got a pair of Oakleys, too,” he tells Nate.

The only appropriate response to that is a look Nate hopes can adequately convey the absurdity of Oakleys on his face.

“They’re there if you decide it won’t hurt your image,” says Brad, rolling his eyes. The bottle of Barq’s he’s holding nearly erupts upon opening, and he looks sheepish about the brown foam on the car seat between his legs.

“Smooth,” Nate remarks.

“As it gets,” returns Brad, swiping at it ineffectually, and passes it over to him.

“Really? Root beer?” says Nate, and takes a sip. “This is medicinal.”

Brad nods in agreement, taking it back.

“Didn’t mean that in a positive way, if there even is one.” Nate goes to type in the address on the GPS and pauses, looking at Brad. “What’re the odds Alamo actually updates their GPS maps as often as they advertise?”

“Same odds they load maps for all of Southern California on it.” Brad shrugs. “When’d the place open?”

“This year.”

“Try,” says Brad. He watches Nate and points, “There.”

“No, that’s the Museum. Shit.”

Brad takes the GPS from him and starts fiddling with the control pad. He presses some buttons on the map screen and does some other shit Nate can’t follow before handing it back.

“There.”

“There?” asks Nate, dubious.

The GPS beeps with an upcoming turn on Pleasant Valley Road. Brad looks smug.

“Amazing,” Nate tells him.

“Humankind has made great progress,” says Brad, craning his neck to look at oncoming traffic. “Even if we did lose Pioneer 10.”

“I meant you,” and Nate did, looking at him for what is probably too long—too long, he realizes, for people who aren’t—and can’t finish the sentence, since he can neither find the right word nor honestly say they aren’t those people. He makes the turn.

 

At a stoplight, Nate notices the letters on Brad’s sleeves, squinting at the monotone screen-print. “UCSD?” he reads finally, absently fingering the green key fob hanging from the ignition. “Go there often?

“YMCA field trip.”

That doesn’t really explain the shirt, but Nate’s more interested in Brad’s apparent philanthropy. “Should I take that to mean you work at the YMCA?”

“Yeah,” says Brad. “Volunteer.”

Nate’s last act of volunteerism was probably accompanying Rick to some event or another. “That’s—really good of you.”

Brad snorts. “Yeah, practically heroic.”

“I mean it, Brad.” Nate doesn’t want to get into his own community absenteeism. He thinks about the Iraqi children Brad held, and enticed with humrats, and shed tears over. That and the fucking hole in the garden Nate ordered him out of. The memory, palpable or not, hangs in the air between them before Nate awkwardly adds, “You do good things. That’s—good to know.”

It earns him an odd look. “I’ll keep you posted on the good things I do.”

“I hope you do,” says Nate, feeling mocked.

 

They get to the Villa with the aid of the GPS and Brad’s apparent ability to handle it, which, in retrospect, shouldn’t have been surprising. As they trundle up the hill, a sign indicates the parking structure apparently hadn’t been fully constructed yet. The hastily designated overflow lot is unpaved gravel, and it enters Nate’s mind that this counts as the off-roading prohibited in the rental contract. He makes the ill-advised decision to ease the Ford back into a spot.

“Nate,” Brad warns in the same second Nate steps on the gas and the stupid car jumps a foot back.

“Nothing’s going to happen to it,” says Nate, looking in the side mirror and silently trying to gauge the inches between the bumpers as he looks around for any witnesses. “It’s a Volvo. They’re sturdy. It’s fine.”

He gingerly shifts into drive. “I’m still going to move, though.”

“Yeah,” says Brad, craning his neck to look at the bumpers. “You do that.”

“Because the spot’s too small,” Nate says. “Not because there’s any damage.”

He ends up accidentally peeling out of the spot with a twist of the steering wheel.

“Since when are you such a reckless driver?” says Brad, looking amused.

“Since never,” says Nate, and then amends, “Since I’m a shitty parker. I don’t like California.”

A frown burns across Brad’s face. “You’d get better handling with stick shift.”

“Be honest, there’s a little bit of posturing there,” says Nate.

“Just park the car, Captain.”

The return of the honorific is perturbing, but Nate figures it comes out in times of crisis, and his parallel parking skills probably merit that classification.

 

There aren’t too many people on a Friday, and the expected school groups are conspicuously absent. Clouds gather above their heads, pale and unthreatening, which only adds to Nate’s odd sense of uneasiness as he and Brad walk up, hands in pockets—he expects it to rain, but the sky isn’t dark enough, and only a salt-laden breeze interrupts the calm. Brad is a half-step behind him, and Nate restrains himself from glancing back, the pull to do so vaguely familiar in a way he can’t place.

The first presence of statues as they enter the atrium is comforting, and Nate suddenly feels as though he knows what to do, even with Brad’s enigmatic presence trailing behind him. They stop at a statue for no particular reason after weaving in and out of the columns.

“I hate when they fill in the eyes with ivory,” Nate remarks, for lack of anything better to say. “Or mock-ivory, I guess.”

“Well, it’s—arresting,” is Brad’s reluctant response. He’s staring up at the painted ceiling as though silently counting the bunches of grapes. “What is this?”

“It’s supposed to be a reconstructed Greek villa. I’ve never been here.”

Brad follows him into one of the rooms, hands behind his back and still evidently more interested in the architecture than in the art. Nate isn’t going to try to generate any enthusiasm in an attempt to entertain Brad, and his mouth is set in a resolute line until they come upon a smaller, rounder room with a sculpture in the center.

“This is the Getty kouros,” Nate notices, mildly excited.

“Gyro?” asks Brad, to be obnoxious.

“Kouros. They’re statues of Greek youths.”

“Who’s this one?”

“It’s not any particular youth, but more of a representation of the idea of youth.”

Brad seems to give this about three seconds of thought. “Sounds exceptionally, excessively gay.”

“Right,” says Nate. “Well, this is an exceptionally, excessively _famous_ gay statue.”

Brad reads, “‘About 530 B.C. or modern forgery,’” and snorts. Nate is unduly offended by the sound, which Brad amends with a sarcastic, “Is nothing in this world true anymore?”

“Well, one of the reasons it’s so fascinating—”

Someone interrupts Nate’s defense of the statue, which is probably for the best. “Excuse me, are you a guide?”

Nate turns around to see a middle-aged couple, and though not replete with all the cliches that accompany tourists, Nate can somehow tell. It seems that Brad can, too, and he smirks, turning away.

“No,” says Nate, uncomfortable. “No, sorry.”

They smile. “Oh,” says the woman. “You just seem so knowledgeable.”

When the tourist is safely out of earshot, Nate hunches his shoulders and says, “Do I look like a tour guide?”

Brad pushes off the column he was leaning against. “You called fucking Iraq Mesopotamia when we were there,” he says. “I wouldn’t be too surprised, Nathaniel C. Fick, author of _One Bullet Away_.”

He moves away, through the arcade and towards the other end of the pool that looks out towards the ocean.

“Jesus Christ,” Nate mutters to his pale reflection in the glass. It might have been foolish and naive to assume things were going well, or that they would.

Nate leaves him alone to look at various scenes of the Fall of Troy. The intense irony isn’t lost on him. Then again, he thinks, maybe it should be. He’s lived his life comparing himself to something, anything; for the most part it had been whatever he went on about in his book, warrior culture, and that of course came from classics, where he’d sat in lecture halls and compared himself to Greek warrior poets. Maybe it was time to realize it was just him, on a ridiculous, unsanctioned, impromptu vacation, at the Getty Villa in the middle of the afternoon, with Brad, a guy who—a guy. Maybe the parts of the sentence that came before ‘Brad’ should have mattered more to him than what came after. Maybe not.

 

Nate finds him by the reflecting pool, squinting up at the somber statue that guards the water.

This is the type of thing he’d make fun of others for, but as he stands, admiring Brad admiring—or whatever the hell he’s doing, probably silently criticizing it for its perceived flaws, Nate doesn’t know—the statue, he can’t help but see the similarities: the noble posture, the inscrutable gaze. He acknowledges the inscrutability of the statue’s eyes is probably from its stone composition, but the comparison holds up. Maybe the whole—thing—with Brad is a holdover from the mythos that consumed a good four years of his life—four if he’s flattering himself and his maturity. Maybe in Brad he can still see that fictional ancient warrior, the one who holds fast throughout war, both impervious to and infinitely in his element in battle.

Then Brad turns around, brow furrowed. Nate comes to stand by him.

“Know who this is?” Brad asks, probably in an attempt at reconciliation, or pacification.

“No,” says Nate, and Brad must understand his tone at least, because he sighs and says, “I’m sorry.”

“You almost wanted to tack on a ‘sir’ at the end,” says Nate.

It earns him an almost-smile. “It took some effort.”

“Brad—”

“Don’t tell me it’s fine.”

Nate is confused. “I really wasn’t going to, but okay.”

“I don’t even know how long you’re here for. If you’d tell me I’d stop—starting shit.”

Shit. Nate should really spend the three hundred dollars on the return ticket, and probably email his boss some update on his “sick family member.”

“Monday is probably my best option at this point,” he says. “I kind of dropped everything.” He remembers that there are several missed calls from Rick, and with the sincere hope that he didn’t miss anything else comes the surge of reality. He has something due, he knows it—feels it, nagging—but can’t remember what it is.

“Hey,” says Brad, a hand on his shoulder that’s gone as soon as Nate registers the touch. “We can take care of that as soon as we get back. It’ll wait a couple hours.”

“Yeah, of course,” Nate reassures him. From where they’re standing, it’s impossible to see the breakers hitting the shore, and all that’s visible is the occasional foamy crest of a wave. “There’s time.”

“Unless you’re hungry.”

“I could eat,” says Nate, not moving. The irregular white peaks among the blue are mesmerizing in a way they hadn’t been in Oceanside, when it was sunnier and windier and he could see the sand. “It’s nice, though.”

“Yeah,” Brad agrees. “But it’s—”

“What?”

Brad has his sunglasses on, and now he looks out of place—too attractive, in a catalogue-model way, Nate notes with some amusement at his own apparent superficiality, to be here. Too eyeless in the sunglasses.

“Come on,” Nate prompts. “If you hate it, I’m not going to think you’re a plebeian, or whatever you think I’m going to think. It’s only fascinating if you’re in the right mindset to appreciate it. I’m tired, too.”

“It’s so far away it’s hard to imagine that they were like us,” says Brad.

“Alive?” asks Nate, though he knows what Brad means, and it’s not a comment on their mortality.

“Something like that.” Brad looks at him. “Hungry. With problems they probably sat by pools thinking about.”

“I know,” Nate tells him. “I think that about people I see on the street, too. And some people I work with.” His parents, too, Nate doesn’t say.

“Yeah,” says Brad, and finally takes off the aviators. “At least we can assume they’re all hungry.”

“Fucking starving,” Nate replies, and the smile they share feels like the first genuine greeting they’ve had since Nate landed.

 

Brad apparently thinks they can beat traffic if they wait until Carlsbad to eat, and by then Nate is starving. The torn-apart Skittles wrapper is lying crumpled on the dashboard when they finally pull up to the In-N-Out drive-thru, and Brad motions for him to park.

“The line’s a waste of time,” says Brad, slamming the door. “Stay here.”

“Where else would I go?” Nate asks the empty car, and digs his phone out.

Three rings later, Rick is saying, “Man, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I’m fine,” Nate tells him.

Rick is still talking. “I was here thinking, shit, he probably thinks he ODed on fucking weed and checked himself into rehab or some shit and now he’s gonna write me letters about finding God. Fuck.”

Nate laughs so hard he has to unbuckle his seatbelt. “I went to college, Rick.”

“You’re still a dumbass, so who knows. Let’s get Ebbitt’s.”

“Uh,” says Nate. “I can’t.”

“Bullshit. Happy hour. Let’s go.”

“No, I really can’t.” Nate pauses. “I’m back in California.”

There’s a silence, and then Rick asks, “Back?”

“I don’t know.”

Another silence. “When are you getting back? To where you actually come ‘back’ to.”

“Monday, probably.”

Rick considers this. Finally, he decides, “You’re going to the Iceplex with me Thursday night,” and hangs up.

He calls Kate next.

“You know,” she says, frustration radiating through the phone, “if some past experiences hadn’t demonstrated that you could take care of yourself, I’d be pretty pissed with you right now.”

“I know,” says Nate, “and I’m sorry, but I had to do this alone.”

“No, you did this half-alone, and left me with incomprehensible fragments of information.” Muted cooing drifts in and out in the background.

“I’ll be back soon,” he says, contrite. “I really want to see the baby. By then—hopefully—I’ll have this figured out.”

Kate sighs. “How’s Brad?”

“He’s—” Nate’s forced to laugh. “He’s completely fine, Kate, he had some non-life-threatening appendix thing.”

“What?”

“I misinterpreted an ambiguous message.” Right. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. It’s weird being back here, but I’m fine, and I’ll be back on the Metro, cursing life, on Monday. Given that variables are cooperative.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Kate.”

“You know what I mean.”

He does. “Yeah,” he says, and then, suddenly, for a reason and from a place he can’t explain, he says, “I’m not like this with anyone else. The way I am here. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

“You have time to figure it out.”

“I guess. Kate?”

“Yeah?”

“Love you,” he says, and then Brad’s tapping on the window. “Gotta go.”

The doors click open and Brad gets in, handing off one of the grease-stained paper bags.

“Two?” Nate asks, inspecting the contents.

“Yeah,” says Brad. “I’m starving. I think I remember being assured you were, too.”

“I am. Thanks.”

They sit there, scarfing fries until Brad shoves a few more in his mouth with an air of finality and crumples up a napkin. “Not of all of it,” he tells Nate, getting out. “I want to show you something.”

“Here?” Nate asks, incomprehensible through the food. He swallows and repeats the question, door open.

“No.” Brad motions him out of the car. “Come on.”

 

They pull up close to Brad’s townhouse and leave Nate’s car there. “Come on,” says Brad, leading them through what seems to be the side gate of another apartment complex, the decaying wood creaking and pliant. Brad unhooks the latch and holds it open for Nate, ducking under the leaves of a banana palm. A green tunnel extends a few yards in front of them, where light is peeking out through splintered wood.

“Jesus, it’s like Vietnam back here,” says Nate, getting a faceful of fronds.

“It’s a residential area,” says Brad, pushing ahead. Nate discerns a man-made stone walkway underneath the moss and thinning undergrowth, but it gives way to dirt and another wooden gate. Planks are missing, held together by a few slats and rusty nails, and Brad gives Nate his paper bag.

“No hinges,” Brad explains. “If I get splinters you’re digging them out,” and squares his shoulders to heave the door, setting it down gently to the side. “Careful.”

Nate edges out before him, Brad’s hand barely grazing Nate’s back. They emerge onto a cliff, jutting out ten yards in front of them, and then the ground ends. The Pacific extends out to the horizon, glittering under the low-hanging sun on its descent. The cliff protrudes at such an angle that Nate can only see water and miles of coast to their right, the white crests of combers rolling heavily onto the shore. If Nate shifts, the sun’s rays are blinding.

“Low tide,” Brad mutters.

Nate moves a little to escape the glare and Brad takes his arm, holding on. They’re alone, meters away from the edge, and Nate goes to him like the waves, laden with coils of kelp and sand and things past. From up here, apparently not too far from where the sea hits the cliff face, they can hear the water splashing against the dripping sandstone beneath them. The surf masks the sounds of their lips meeting, slow and easy, and the sun beats down on Nate’s exposed neck until Brad curls an arm around him. Nate’s shorter, even in his thick-soled Sperrys, but still doesn’t quite fit comfortably under Brad’s chin. Brad keeps him against his chest, and his cheek just catches Brad’s. Dipping his head, Brad’s speaking right in Nate’s ear, saying something that’s caught up in the roar of the waves, too soft to be heard, and Nate closes his eyes.

 

Their fries are still warm from sitting in the sun, but the double-doubles have melted into a meat and lettuce conglomerate, sliding between the bread. Sauce drips down Nate’s fingers and is threatening to dribble past his wrist, but the air is dusty enough that Nate isn’t tempted to lick it off.

“Looks like the Atlantic,” is the first thing either of them have said that the other could hear, and it’s stupid, as though he’s never been here before. Maybe he has been around San Diego, but not here. It looks nothing like the Atlantic, but Nate only has one frame of reference for water, and he can’t think of anything else to say.

“Not at sunset,” says Brad, and Nate wonders if Brad’s words are this effortlessly profound to everyone, or if Nate’s the only one who thinks so. Maybe Brad’s words don’t affect anyone else because no one else hears them. It’s a vaguely comforting, self-sabotaging thought.

“Still light out,” Brad remarks, watching the surfers bob on the luminescent water.

Nate has surfed before, maybe twice in California, and once when he was eight, in Puerto Rico with his parents and Kate. Still, he admits, “I don’t really know how to surf.” He feels Brad start to say something and adds, “Not that I’m not confident you can teach me, but I can’t learn in the next two hours.”

Brad laughs. “Next time, then.”

“I can stay on the beach,” says Nate. He wants to have a few minutes of watching Brad without the reciprocal scrutiny.

Brad shakes his head. “We’ll just go out on the water.”

: : :

The scene at the Getty Villa was just another step and misstep in their minuet of misunderstandings, Nate thinks when they’re sitting on their boards. Water laps at Nate’s hips, and his fingers trace the designs on the fiberglass. It seems like they’re constantly moving forward and backward in tiny increments and never quite meeting in the middle, only sideswiping each other. Random facts come into Nate’s head, some from daytime TV, others whose origin he can’t recall, whether from gloomy Baltimore Saturday mornings or the shit he watches back in DC when there’s nothing else on at two in the morning.

“You know the Titanic disaster could have been averted?”

“Yes,” Brad replies, glancing back at the waves. “With more lifeboats.”

“No,” says Nate. “Not only.”

“All right.”

“The ship was engineered to withstand a head-on collision. It could have withstood even more compartments being breached, if only the captain hadn’t tried to avoid the iceberg at the last second.”

Brad just grunts acknowledgement, clearing water from his nose. Nate’s eyes and mouth prickle from the salt. He floats off a little to the side, turned around by a wave.

“Always face the wave,” says Brad, “if you don’t know what you're doing. Perpendicular, not parallel.”

He tugs Nate’s board closer, back to his side. Another wave, stronger, pushes Nate forward. Brad keeps an eye on him.

“Might pick up soon.” Brad looks over. “Why the Titanic, Captain?”

“Don’t know,” says Nate. It’s pretty embarrassingly transparent to him, in his own mind. He feels a little stupid with how undisguised it is. “Just thought of it.”

Nate knows a conversation should probably happen here, or should have already happened. But he doesn’t know what he wants to say, or how to say it. Big fucking surprise, he thinks. “Don’t go”? Inadequate. Impossible, given the circumstances, that his pride would let him say that. And he wouldn’t know what he meant, anyway. Don’t go where? He can’t say anything, so he drifts on the board and tries to turn his mind off.

 

“I think you win better host,” Nate confesses as they stand under the rasping beach shower, rinsing off.

Brad brushes a hand over his ear. “Sand in your hair.”

“Thanks.” Nate scrubs more vigorously, less necessary now with short hair. “For being the better host, too.”

“I try not to take people to graveyards,” says Brad, echoing Nate’s thoughts of standing in Arlington fog, cold and lost.

Nate pauses. “If this doesn’t count.”

“If what doesn’t?”

Nate gestures towards the ocean, and Brad just snorts, obviously confused.

It seems, right now, against the setting sun, like the final resting place of hope—the Pacific Ocean, the end of the continent in a vast, hopeless way, like the Atlantic without the promise of the Old World in the distance. Brad obviously thinks it’s beautiful. Nate guesses he agrees. The barren beauty and the feeling are familiar from the Iraqi desert, though the landscape is nothing like it.

The last little sliver of light disappears beyond the horizon, and Nate shivers under the dwindling trickle of water from the spray.

Brad doesn’t ask, but Nate feels compelled to fill the silence. “Always seems colder when it’s dark.”

Brad grunts assent, throwing a towel over Nate’s shoulders.

“I didn’t mean I was cold,” Nate says, looking at his bare back, wetsuit sleeves hanging around his waist.

“Come on,” Brad tells him. “You’re falling asleep.”

: : :

Nate emerges from the shower to the sound of South Park blaring through the bedroom, Brad in boxers and an old PT shirt, watching contentedly. Nate gets in bed, too exhausted to drag the duvet over himself. Every so often Brad gives a soft laugh Nate can feel reverberating through him.

“I forgot you were actually fifteen,” Nate mutters, looking up at Brad with all the incredulity he can muster.

 _Broflovski, did you put this crap on my windshield?_ “What?”

“South Park? Really?”

Brad just shrugs, settling deeper into the pillows at his back. _Dude, a going-away party is supposed to be for the person who is going away!_ comes from the TV. Nate drifts in and out, enduring the high-pitched voices for several minutes before he decides he’s had enough.

“Please turn that off,” is Nate’s admittedly feeble entreaty.

“Listen, Captain,” Brad says, seriously enough for Nate to make an effort to sit up. “I’m telling you this only because I cannot depart this earth leaving Corporals Person and Trombley as the sole keepers of this knowledge.”

Now Nate is concerned that Ray and Trombley have any knowledge of whatever is going to follow. “What? Knowledge of what?”

“Of my immaculate South Park impressions.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No,” says Brad, grinning. He turns to Nate, raising his eyebrows. “Are you ready?”

“No.”

“Well, _hello_ there, little pup!” Brad drawls, apparently unable to keep the smile off of his face. “I'm Big Gay Al. Have you been outcast?”

Nate knows his mouth is hanging open in disbelief. He shakes his head. “How is this happening? You’re a staff sergeant in the Marine Corps, quoting gay jokes from South Park at me.”

“I don’t think my rank means much in this situation,” says Brad. “At least not against me.”

“Come on.”

“I enjoy the intelligent conversation,” says Brad, indicating Cartman.

“It’s not political.” This seems to garner no response except for a smirk as Mackey declares, _Well from now on, I'm only going to associate with other hybrid car drivers. Everyone else is just ignorant, m'kay?_ “I can’t stand the voices.”

Brad just throws an arm across him.

“Turn it off and I’ll blow you.”

For a second Nate thinks about whether this was the wrong thing to say, considering Brad’s previous aversion to anything with mouths, whatever that meant. Nate surprises himself; the one thing he resolutely hasn’t devoted thought to was the issue about Brad, the man. He has to push Rick’s stupid voice out of his head. Love seems different, more conducive to analysis and overthinking, but now, lying in bed with Brad, is decidedly more physical, prone to necessitating action, in a way unexpectedly feels more natural, decisive. He’s never, not even—especially not—during boot camp, looked at another man that way and not in the field either, unless it was with Brad, though that was mostly focused on other variables. The events of the previous night, and other nights, had already passed and were arguably more intimate, intrusive—maybe it was just because it had given Brad pause that it was giving Nate any, but he had wanted it in the shower that year ago and wants it now, wants to give it to Brad here in the bed, as they argue over fucking South Park.

But Brad only smiles and tightens his hold on the remote, finger on the off button.

“Bartering sexual favors now, are we?”

“I’m not above it,” Nate tells him, and thinks about lunging at him to silence the goddamn screeching when Brad slips out from the covers, shutting the TV off.

“Give me a minute,” he says, ostensibly going to turn the lights off. Nate’s breathing is slow and even by the time Brad leaves the room.

: : :

The next morning, Brad lets him sleep. Nate feels a brief brush of lips on his shoulder, and Brad murmuring, “I’ll be back.”

“Wait,” Nate mutters, unwilling to let go of the weight, real or imaginary, across his sleeping chest.

“It’s just dry-cleaning,” Brad says, words moving against Nate’s forehead now. “Groceries, shit like that. Sleep.”

When Nate wakes up again, he spends a few minutes with his eyes closed, avoiding the morning sun shining through the window, and then wakes up at once, hands going straight to his phone for the time. It’s only nine-thirty, but it feels later with the blinds open.

A page of the Union-Tribune on the bedside table flutters under the stream of air from the fan, previously held down by his phone. Nate doesn’t know if it has any particular significance, and he blindly opens the drawer to grope around inside—maybe Brad’s vanity prevents him from admitting he wears reading glasses.

Instead, he finds an empty bottle of Motrin, and then his fingers close around something creased and worn soft. He rolls over, back onto the stiff pillows—why is everything in Brad’s house hard?—to inspect it more closely. It’s startling to see something so familiar look so foreign, here in California: it’s a DC Metro card, with lime green text and two pandas eating bamboo on the front. The faded numbers in a printed column on the left read _01 75 - 01 85 - 01 85 - 02 15_ , and Nate recognizes some of them: Foggy Bottom to Arlington, Foggy Bottom to Navy Yard and back, Chinatown. It takes Nate a few seconds to make out the scrawl on the reverse: capital letters spell out NATE, and underneath that, DECEMBER 05.

Nate stares at it for a long time, until the letters go blurry and he passes a hand over his eyes, leaving it there. He considers writing something on the card—his initials or some other small indication that he had seen it, but decides against it. He smooths it out and tucks it back into the drawer, closing it gently. It takes him several more minutes to get up.

When Nate looks at the newspaper, Brad’s written something in the corner, but it just says _ground beef 2 lb_ , _bank_ , the curiously misspelled _driclean_ , and _ticket check_. Nate isn’t sure whether that means his own plane ticket, which he’ll buy as soon as he takes a shower, or Brad’s numerous infractions.

 

The last-minute ticket is just as exploitatively expensive as the one he bought to San Diego, but Nate has no choice. United will get him to Reagan National around noon on Monday. On a whim he checks DC weather—it’s raining, with a high of 54F. He clicks out, shivering in the AC, and goes to pull on one of Brad’s sweatshirts.

Breakfast is the muddy coffee Brad left out on the counter, seemingly for him, and he spreads an avocado he finds in the crisper drawer on toast. He’s not quite adventurous, or awake, enough to brave the beach alone, but he goes down to the pool, key in the pocket of his borrowed swim trunks. They’re slightly baggy on him, and unattractive, but there’s no one in the pool or the patio at ten-thirty am.

He's easing himself into the pool, which is unexpectedly cold, when an old biplane—he can’t quite recognize the model—tears through the silence, roaring overhead as it comes into view over the trees. For a weird moment, Nate feels the dissociative sensation of seeing himself from an external vantage point, out on the concrete, watching himself floating in someone else’s chlorinated celadon pool in San Diego. It strikes him suddenly that this isn’t _after_ ; this is it, whatever _it_ ’s going to be, whether it’s here or DC or back in Baltimore. The realization settles in, and an odd serenity accompanies it. It follows him as he wraps himself in the towel and drips his way into Brad’s apartment.

Nate cleans up a little, not that there’s much to do. His motivation is selfish, but he rearranges a few things—shoves the pumpkin and the tiki doll back into the closet. He can always plead ignorance if Brad asks, which he won’t. The throw blanket is left on the couch; he folds it up neatly before decides its messiness takes away some of the IKEA showroom quality of the room, and shakes it out again.

: : :

It starts to drizzle by the time Nate hears Brad coming up the steps, an hour later.

“Hey,” says Brad, opening the door. The dry cleaning is thrown over his shoulder, and he’s balancing groceries in his arms. “You better have slept.”

“I did,” says Nate, shutting the door behind him and following him into the kitchen.

From the depths of the refrigerator, Brad tells him, “The bike’s in the shed.”

“What?”

Brad closes the door and gives him a look. “You didn’t notice your rental vehicle mysteriously missing this morning?”

Nate goes over to the window; the car is indeed gone. “Just for insurance purposes,” says Nate, “where is it now?”

“My parking space. But you shouldn’t worry anyway, Tauruses don’t go for much on the black market.”

“So you’ve heard,” says Nate, leaning on the breakfast counter.

Brad flashes him a smile. “So I’ve heard.”

: : :

“I’m going to go take a look at the bike,” Brad tells him, several hours of TV later. The drizzle has finally turned into a fine mist, and Nate feels himself getting hungry again.

“Okay,” Nate replies from where he’s sprawled on the couch—slightly more comfortable since he’s been here, if he finds the right angle and has his head on the soft part of Brad’s stomach. Brad moves as though to get up, and Nate asks, “Now?”

Brad opens with a wincing, “I have dinner with my parents.”

“All right.”

“I can’t cancel this,” Brad tells him. “Tonight.”

Nate straightens up, not sure he understands. “Am I barred from it?”

Brad looks genuinely surprised. “No,” he says. “I assumed you would probably find better things to do.”

“Alone in Oceanside?” says Nate, and instantly regrets how it came out. “And I wouldn’t want to, anyway.”

“All right,” is Brad’s eventual response. “We’re taking the bike.”

“Brad—”

“I don’t know if you were aware, Captain, but your head has been pressing into my stitches for the past two hours and I haven’t expired yet.”

“Oh, Jesus,” says Nate, pushing Brad’s shirt up to look. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Brad’s hand stops him, drawing Nate's fingers down to his jeans. “Because it wasn’t bothering me.”

Nate is still looking at him, searching for signs of pain, when Brad kisses him quickly and stands up. “Let’s go.”

The surprise is enough to get Nate to follow him out back to some shed, something that he guesses counts as a dry garage for the bike.

“Two rules,” says Brad, getting his helmet. “Rule one: We do not discuss my tattoo, we do not make any reference to it, we do not mention it.”

“I don’t remember the last time we ever discussed it,” says Nate.

“Well, it won’t be today.”

“Why?”

“See,” says Brad, “questions like that make it hard for me to trust you.”

Nate laughs. “I’m just asking.”

“My parents still don’t know that it exists.”

Nate is incredulous. “What?”

“Rule two,” Brad continues, “we do not make excessive reference to the Corps, and we do not make _any_ reference to any combat situations we have experienced, separately or together.”

Or to the nature of their relationship, thinks Nate. But maybe he’s not giving Brad enough credit.

Nate looks surprised enough that Brad shrugs and says, “She still feels guilty every day that she gave in and sent me to military school.”

“What do you mean, gave in?”

Brad shoots him a look. “You’ll understand when you meet my parents.” It seems like Brad is fiddling with straps and metal parts, shuffling around in the garage, or shed, or whatever its intended use was. It’s odd seeing him make any unnecessary movements. Nate only recognizes it because he keeps busy in the same useless way sometimes.

“I’m not going to say anything,” Nate assures him.

“I don’t want to give them unnecessary cause to be upset,” says Brad, finally putting down whatever was in his hands. “She probably thought the appendicitis was caused by the Corps, too.”

In Brad’s mother’s defense, maybe Nate kind of did, too.

: : :

“You’re sure you’re all right with the bike?” Brad asks, looking back at Nate, tongue pressed to the side of his mouth to keep from smiling. “We can always take the Ford.”

“Oh, blow me,” says Nate, and swings a leg over the motorcycle. “Forgive me for worrying about your gaping flesh wound.”

“The mouth on you, Captain,” Brad returns, grinning.

Nate refrains from shoving him. “Can I hold on, or is that going to ruin your image?”

Brad just laughs, sound muffled behind the visor. “I’m not going to be going slow enough for anyone to get an image, so you can do whatever the hell you want.”

 

When they pull up outside the apartment and Nate gets off, he stops Brad.

“I won’t say anything.”

“Jesus,” says Brad. “I shouldn’t have told you.” Probably not, thinks Nate. He wouldn’t have said anything anyway.

“It’s not—some _thing_ ,” Brad continues. “They love it until it’s me. It can’t always be someone else’s son. I guess the shock just hasn’t worn off. Eleven years later.”

That sounds refreshingly familiar. “My mom’s too WASPy to admit it,” says Nate, “but it’s the same with her.”

“Operative phrase, ‘too WASPy to admit it,’” Brad says and gives him a small smile. “Ready?”

“Cry havoc and all that?” asks Nate.

Brad barks a laugh. “And all that.”

 

Brad’s father greets him at the door, and Nate searches for similarities in their features before he has to stop himself. Brad makes his way up the footpath—beyond the knee-high white picket fence, Nate notes with amusement—first, as Nate shuts the gate.

Nate watches them intently from a few steps away, as brief as the interaction is.

“This is Nate Fick,” says Brad, as his father extends a hand. “We served together.”

“Charlie,” Brad’s father tells Nate. He’s tall, blond—or was once, at least—like Brad, with welcoming eyes. He stands about an inch taller than Nate, with a broad enough chest that makes Nate wonder whether he was in the military, too. The inch, negligible as it is, still makes Nate feel like he’s seventeen again and meeting his prom date’s father. Brad’s father adds, “I’m afraid I’ve heard absolutely nothing about you.”

Nate is struggling with a neutral answer when he sees Brad rolls his eyes. “Dad.”

“I’m joking,” says Brad’s father. “It’s Fick that, Fick this. Feels like we’ve already met.”

“That’s not true, either,” says Brad, but his mouth is twisted in an awkward smile and he’s taking too long to hang his leather jacket on the hook in the hallway.

“It’s all right,” says Nate, smiling, “he was in my book, so I guess it’s payback.”

“A book?” asks Charlie, interested.

“Dad, can we help with anything?” Brad interjects, a hand pressing firm but unseen at Nate’s back.

“All right,” says his father, ushering them in. “Your mother’s in the kitchen. The rain soaked the patio, and it looks like it’s threatening again, so we’re inside.”

“Sure,” says Brad. “Where’s Daffy?”

Nate looks back at him. “Daffy?”

“The dog. Don’t ask.”

Apparently his father’s answer that the dog was in the back is unsatisfactory to Brad, and he brushes past them in the hallway, ostensibly to go rescue him. Nate is left alone with Charlie, and it’s less awkward that it should be.

“Daffodil?” Nate guesses, and Charlie’s expression turns comically dark, in a way that immediately reminds Nate of Brad.

“Daffodoodle,” he answers gravely. “An abomination that I will never forgive my wife for. It’s a male dog, for God’s sake.”

The idea that Brad, at least by extension, owns a dog with that name elicits laughter, maybe for longer than polite, but Charlie just seems vindicated.

“That’s the standard reaction. Follow me to meet the perpetrator of this crime.”

The house is dominated by a narrow hallway leading into a den with a shag carpet, as advertised by Ray’s insistence that Brad had brushed it. Nate’s glad Reporter kept that detail. He won’t bring it up, but Brad reappears just as Nate catches a glimpse of the childhood photos lining the wall.

Brad groans, and Charlie leaves them there, going into the kitchen.

“Sorry,” says Nate, after Charlie’s retreating back. “I don’t know if your dad wanted me to—”

“Don’t worry about it,” says Brad.

“Jesus,” says Nate, tracing the linear evolution of Brad’s childhood as he makes his way to the right, “you were a gap-toothed little kid!”

He turns around to Brad standing behind him, arms crossed and chin tilted up as he stares Nate down. Nate just laughs and goes back to looking at the mosaic of framed photos. Brad in clear blue water by a wooden jetty, Brad on a BMX, Brad with a woman Nate presumes to be his grandmother. Brad looking surly in a thick sweater, lighting a menorah. Brad with what looks like complicated orthodontics. “God, you must’ve been annoying.”

An arm comes around his neck, pressing playfully before moving down to lay flat across Nate’s chest. Nate feels their height difference acutely now, and Brad is chewing something in his ear.

“You know you’re getting whatever that is in your mouth,” says Nate, twisting around under Brad’s bicep, “on the floor.”

“Yeah,” says Brad, letting him go. “I know.” He looks down at the big golden Lab thumping his tail against the wall. “Come on, Daff. Eat the crumbs.”

The dog just continues looking up at them with happy eyes, wagging and watching.

“Jesus,” says Brad. “We have a dumb dog. Are you just going to stand there and look at me, or eat the crumbs?”

“You’re so cruel,” says Nate, laughing.

“Why do you think we bought you?” Brad asks Daffy, a hand by Nate’s hip as they look down.

“Brad, stop torturing the dog!” his mom calls from the kitchen. “Bring Nate in here.”

 

Nate is vociferously prohibited from helping set the table, so he waits around with Daffy, who sits on his feet the moment Nate gets a hand in the thick fur at his neck. As soon as they sit down, the expected inquisition begins, with less restraint—but also less urgency—than it would have proceeded with at the Ficks’ table.

“Are you from around here, Nate?” asks Charlie, buttering a roll.

Nate spares a look towards Brad, who’s forking asparagus onto his plate with a look of deep tranquility.

“Once was,” says Nate. He passes the potatoes. “For, uh—at Pendleton.”

“What brings you back?”

Nate hesitates, not sure what implications this visit makes, and whether they fall under the category of the previously agreed upon unspeakable, and starts to say something when Brad interrupts.

“Just visiting.” He catches Nate’s eye, but the exchange between them seems to go unnoticed, at least by Charlie.

Brad’s mother just smiles and says, “But now?”

“DC,” says Nate, on more familiar ground with small talk. “Originally Baltimore. Glad to get a break from the weather, that’s for sure.”

“Long way,” Charlie remarks. “So, government business there? Or do you just like torturing yourself?”

Nate laughs. “Uh, we—Brad and I—served together. I recently got out,” he says, stopping himself from looking at Brad just in time. “But I’ll be going to grad school relatively soon.”

Brad’s mother brightens. “Law?”

“Uh, no,” says Nate. “Not for me. Probably public policy, I think. At least that’s what I’m leaning towards.” He realizes this is as much of a revelation to her as it is to Brad, who never asked and who Nate assumed always somehow knew.

“We always thought Brad would make a good lawyer,” Brad’s mother comments, and Brad snorts, spooning potato salad onto his plate.

“What, Brad?” she asks. “What is that noise for? You would.”

“Mom.”

“Oh, God,” Brad’s mother says, shaking her head. “Nate, take some potato salad.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Colbert.”

Brad outright laughs.

“You’re so polite, Nate, but please call me Deborah.”

Nate doesn’t, but the genuine sentiment is welcome. Conversation turns to other things, updates from the neighborhood, and it feels like the most relaxed family dinner Nate’s had in a long time.

“You know Brian started his own firm?” Brad’s mother says, and for a moment Nate can’t match the name with Brad’s sudden rigidity.

“Fuck him,” Charlie says. Brad almost chokes on his smile, but plays it off as Deborah cries, “Charles!”

“What?” says Charlie, grinning at Brad. “He’s an idiot.”

Deborah shakes her head and gives Nate a look. “Please forgive these two.”

The muted scream of a distant train whistle breaks through, and the dog starts barking.

 

Brad corners him near the bathroom in the hall. He’s grinning. “Nate.”

“What?” Nate’s hands are wet; he was just looking for a towel.

“My mom _is_ aware that I’m in the Marines.”

Nate laughs, and then Brad is suddenly, silently, sliding his hand against Nate’s cheek. Nate leans into it, even as his knuckles go white where he’s holding onto the molding of the doorjamb.

After a few seconds, Nate says, “So your mother wants her son to be a lawyer, too.”

Brad just smiles, sliding his hand down to Nate’s neck, collarbone. “That was never going to happen,” he says, and then adds, “Brian’s a lawyer,” and it doesn’t take much guessing to remember who that is.

Nate feels a surge of impotent anger. It’s easy to put blame on Brian and Jenny or whatever the fuck her name was. It’s distractingly easy to wonder if Jenny ruined Brad, and that the blame is hers, and fuck her that she gets to live out her life waterskiing and framing photos, and that she’s the reason Nate doesn’t get to have this. Did she ruin Brad? That leads to another thought that’s satisfying in how fucking dead-end it is: did Brad ruin _him_?

Nate knows how this is supposed to be framed.  Mistakes were made. Passive voice. No blame.

Then again, maybe if Jenny had been faithful, Nate wouldn’t have anything.

He thinks he’s done assigning blame, the way he wanted to in Iraq and the way he figures he did, ambiguously or not, in the book, which at this point seems more trouble than the space on his shelf that it’s worth. He should have left that shit to Wright. At least then there could have been some mystery left; at least he could have been left with the idea that closure _was_ out there, and that maybe, eventually, if he ever wrote that book he had notes for, he could get it. This way, he’s left with the certainty that it doesn’t exist and there’s no way he can force it into being.

Or maybe, he thinks, looking at Brad, no one ruined anyone. Brad could have fucking gotten over it by now, if Nate lets himself assume that was the real reason along, and that it’s not Nate himself. Hell, Nate could have gotten over it by now. It could have all been over by now, by the time they left Iraq, by the time Brad left DC, either then or now. But it’s not.

He should probably have had this figured out by now.

When Brad’s mother calls his name, Brad moves away just as gracefully as he had moved toward Nate, and lets his hand brush over Nate’s chest as it falls.

: : :

Outside, after dessert, they stand for a few moments to admire the sunset. Everything is still damp around them, sidewalk blotchy, but it’s difficult to tell whether it’s from the previous rain or another impending downpour.

“Thanks for giving them the chance to see what could have been,” says Brad, and it feels too ominous. Apparently Brad feels it too, and adds: “What they think I could have been, at least.”

Nate doesn’t think so, though he could see Brad—physically, at least—in a lecture hall, pencil in his mouth, looking simultaneously bored and focused. He probably would have made a good engineer, but even that would have been—inadequate. Nate shakes his head.

“You don’t think so?” asks Brad, and then breaks out into a smile. “Neither do I.”

“Neither do they,” Nate guesses.

Brad shrugs. “Not so sure about them,” he says. “But maybe they’re getting there.”

They stand in silence for a minute, watching the sky wash the gray walls and sidewalks in pink. When the light starts to turn purple, Brad says, “Public policy, huh?”

“I don’t know,” says Nate. “Are you surprised?”

“No,” says Brad.

“Neither am I, I guess. Everything just feels so—stagnant. No. I don’t know. Old, outdated.” He laughs suddenly. “I feel like even this—disillusionment is naive. Jesus Christ, I feel so fucking old and so naive at the same time—like I’ve lived so long, and learned nothing.”

The outburst is embarrassing, but feels somehow freeing—like this lawn, looking towards the sliver of ocean visible between the houses across, bathed in pink light, isn’t real, a brief break from the reality inside.

“You’re not damaged goods,” says Brad suddenly. “Stop letting people tell you you are.”

“Unless they’re giving me money for it, right?” says Nate, looking up at him.

Brad looks confused, and Nate clarifies: “Veterans tuition benefits. Anyway,” he grins, “that’s shameless plagiarism from Mattis. As if you thought I wouldn’t know.”

“I’m not above quoting better men. Standing on shoulders and all that.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.”

“Disillusionment is a sign of growing up,” says Brad, thumbing his shoulder. “Not necessarily maturity.”

“Coming from the greatest cynic I know.”

Brad shrugs and lets his hand fall. “Don’t let yourself get dragged down by disillusionment. Just know who you are. The rest doesn’t matter.”

“I didn’t expect you to be such an idealist,” Nate says with a small smile.

Brad gives him a neutral moue. “I’ve gotten good at giving pep talks.”

The door behind them opens and Charlie comes out. “You a drinking man, Nate?”

Nate looks towards Brad, the gesture involuntary. He gets a look of mock-scandal. “I’m driving, young Nathaniel. But your youthful metabolism should be able to handle a drink.”

“You could walk the dog instead,” Brad’s mother calls from the doorway.

“Brad can do that,” says Charlie, and Brad heaves a put-upon sigh, but retreats to get the leash.

“I’m not going to insult you by asking if you’re old enough to drink, but I’m assuming you’re old enough to drink,” Charlie adds to Nate. He can hear Brad’s laughter from the recesses of the house, door open. It’s probably best not to respond. There’s still a smile playing at Brad’s lips as he comes out, Daffy padding along happily behind him.

“Only around the block,” he says, stuffing plastic bags into his pocket. “I’m not coming back to retrieve a drunk officer.”

 

“We had one of your guys over here,” Brad’s father is saying, after what was apparently a circuitous conversation about the weather. Nate is inexplicably unsettled, even when he learns it’s only Ray on a stopover. He had anticipated a solitary moment with Brad’s parents, but this feels different, and he takes another sip of the whiskey.

“I know it’s difficult in ways that it isn’t for the rest of us,” Charlie says, and it somehow feels ominous and oblique. Nate thinks they’re talking about Brad before Charlie adds, “But the two of you seem capable.”

Nate wasn’t sure what side of the division of the “rest of us,” he was on; he had assumed the Charlie was referring to now included him, a civilian—a civilian friend. Now it seems that Brad’s father is making references Brad himself hadn’t made, and Nate is suddenly very aware of all the things he and Brad had done the previous night. He shifts to the other foot.

“Anyway,” says Charlie, “I’m not going to thank you, because God knows we know Brad, and he would probably never speak to us again if he learned I did that, but the way he talked about you after he came back—” Charlie nods and reaches out to clasp Nate’s hand just as Brad is coming up the walkway with the dog.

“We’ll see you again?” says Charlie.

“I hope,” Nate ventures, because it’s true, and because it seems like a jarring enough statement to make in front of Brad.

“If we’re good, I bet,” Charlie calls, chuckling at Brad’s face.

 

Before they get on the motorcycle, Nate feels like Brad would take it the way he means it to be understood: “You and your dad are very similar.”

He’s gratified to see a smile cross Brad’s face. “Thanks,” he says, and after a moment, adds, “In elementary school, when they asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up, they told me I couldn’t be my dad. Had to go and join the Corps instead.” Brad looks over, the same smile in place. “I guess you can see why.”

Nate nods. “I can.”

Nate’s only regret was that he wasn’t shown Brad’s bar mitzvah album. The look they share before putting on their helmets, Brad’s hand at his shoulder, makes Nate shiver with reminiscence, and with the foolish hope that he might get to, someday.

: : :

On the way back, Brad slows to a stop on the shoulder and takes his helmet off.

“What?” says Nate, worried. He has a leg on the pavement, half-ready to dismount.

“Can’t hear anything otherwise,” says Brad. Nate was just starting to wonder how they were supposed to communicate on the bike. “You ready to go to home?”

“Lead the way, Staff Sergeant.”

 

Once they’re in the apartment, Nate goes to straighten one of the bland, hotel-like prints on the wall, but a hand tugs him back by the wrist, back to the door where Brad’s standing, still holding his helmet.

“What?” Nate asks, but he knows as soon as he feels Brad’s fingers in his, Brad’s left hand gripping his chin. The kiss is long and slow, and Nate follows Brad’s mouth when Brad dips sideways to set the helmet on the floor. Brad is uncharacteristically—right, thinks Nate, with a frame of reference of a total of two weeks together—sloppy, mouth hot and loose against Nate, his jaw, his neck. Now one of Brad’s hands is clutching Nate’s ass, the other wrapped around his back, and when Nate finds the hem of Brad’s shirt and starts pushing it up, getting to skin, he’s suddenly shoved up against the door, doorknob digging into his side, Brad’s thigh pressing insistently _up_ between his legs.

Nate catches Brad’s face in his hands and kisses him again. Brad’s hand are everywhere; Nate can barely register them on his hips, his shoulders, his ass, before they’re somewhere else, more grabbing than stroking, but his tongue is unhurried against Nate’s, heavy and gentle. There’s one guess as to what brought this on, but Nate doesn’t really know what he did, or demonstrated, at Brad’s parents’ house; maybe it’s Charlie’s words, but Nate really, really doesn’t want to think about that right now. He no longer wants to be vertical, either; _fuck_ , he’s hard, and he tears his mouth away, shuddering. It must be obvious what he’s trying to do, because Brad says, “We can’t do this on the floor,” even as they’re sliding against the door.

“Yeah,” Nate breathes, not sure what he’s agreeing to. He can’t really be sure about a lot of things, especially not about how they get to the floor, but his knees hit the hardwood first, and then Brad’s on top of him, rolling his hips.

It takes a few more minutes for Brad to pant at him, in between pressing kisses to his chin, the side of his face, and back to his lips, again, and again, and again—“Fuck, are we going to?”

Nate nods against his skin, a hand on Brad’s smooth back, dipping down, skimming the waistband of his jeans. He glances toward the unlocked door, but that concern, like all others, is eliminated in the wake of Brad’s mouth on his neck.

They don’t get to do much; at one point Nate thinks he’ll come just from Brad driving against him, hitching his thighs up around Brad’s waist. He tries to get a hand in Brad’s pants, but it’s impossible with the way Brad’s moving against him. It doesn’t get urgent until the very end, when Brad’s supporting his weight on one hand, sliding the other into Nate’s hair, or what remains of it after Candace in Oceanside, and screws his eyes shut.

“What?” Nate asks, watching him in the glimpses he gets when his eyes aren’t threatening to roll back in his head. The force of Brad’s next thrust punches the breath out of both of them.

“Brad,” he gasps, needing to hear something.

Brad’s answers are punctuated by grunts. “Fuck. This—sorry—”

“God, no, this is good,” Nate breathes. Even stringing those words together take effort, and he tightens the arm he has around Brad’s neck, pressing him closer, feeling the muscles shift in his shoulders. They’re both still wearing clothes, and somehow this is better than anything they’d done before, as incredibly high school as this is, grinding against each other on—Christ—the floor, his bare back where his shirt is rucked up sliding painfully against the parquet.

Nate can feel Brad tense. “Brad—” and then Brad’s mouth is on his again, and now it’s hard and unrelenting and everything Nate wishes he could put into words.

 

They make it to the shower afterwards, and make it out relatively clean, distracted from their purpose only a few times. Something wakes Nate in the middle of the night—maybe it’s the heat or the fan turning on, since the floor is frigid when he swings his feet over the bed—and he carefully goes to get a glass of water, cautious of any creaking. When he returns to the bedroom, Brad is still asleep, sprawled out on his stomach, a hand curled at the edge of Nate’s pillow. Nate leans against the doorjamb with the glass in his hand, watching Brad’s back rise and fall.

A part of leaving the Corps, aside from the disaffection, Nate knows, was the knowledge that if you gave a certain amount of your life to something, it became your life. But with Brad—well, it’s conceivable.

: : :

Nate’s bags are packed before they leave for downtown San Diego—not to the airport yet, since Nate has to take the car back. Brad is adjusting the rearview mirror when Nate shoves a hand in the pocket of his jeans and remembers something he won’t be able to do later.

“Give me a second,” he tells Brad. “Forgot my phone.”

He jogs up to the second story with Brad’s keys in his hand, and walks through to the bedroom. The sticker—“MARINE GUNNERY SERGEANTS. GOD'S MOST EXCELLENT CREATION”—goes in the bedside drawer, folded up behind the Metro card. Maybe Brad would find it by the time he reached the Promotion Board, months away. It seems demonstrative, but Nate’s not sure if he actually has confidence in the longevity of—this. Confidence isn’t quite the same as hope. The car horn sounds outside, and Nate locks the door behind him.

 

Downtown, apparently for lack of suitable attractions—closed or dampened by the threateningly gray horizon—Brad gets them past the USS Midway and into the Village’s parking lot, which informs them, post-ticket dispensing, that parking is four dollars with a purchase and sixteen without.

“Looks like we’re buying you a souvenir,” says Brad, maneuvering the car into a space. “If anything’s open.”

Nate automatically fingers his wallet, as though he can feel the bills in it through the leather. He sits there calculating until he realizes he’s wondering whether he has enough cash for the trip, as though he’s in a different country with foreign currency.

Brad buys them coffee in the book store, and there’s a table with two chairs and a Chinese checkers board on the balcony of the upper floor. Brad takes small sips as Nate sets up the marbles. When Nate looks up, questioning, Brad only says, “Drink up. There’s at least four more of those if we want to get our money’s worth.”

They play a few games that all mysteriously end in ties before Brad declares they’re playing it wrong. His face tells Nate he’s known it for at least past two rounds, and he breaks out into a grin when Nate kicks him. He manages to catch hold of Nate’s ankle for a moment before letting it go and leaning back.

“Do you remember this place?” Brad asks finally, like he’s testing Nate’s memory. His fingers still burn around Nate’s leg.

“No,” says Nate. “I’m starting to feel that I did a lot less sightseeing in my time here than you think I did.”

“Maybe.”

They sip their coffee in silence for a while, watching a few visitors trickle in and out, seeking refuge from the dreariness outside.

“See your book here?” says Brad when he notices Nate looking around at the stacks. It’s not vindictive, but it breaks the companionable silence. Besides, they’re in the cooking section.

“I think,” Nate says quietly, “if you read the book I wanted to write in Iraq, it would have been different. But I knew people were going to read it, and—trust me, the notes look different. And even those are miles away from what’s in my head.”

Brad disappears for a few minutes after they get up to stretch their legs. Nate half-heartedly reads through a few smartass bumper stickers about the apparent correlation between drinking coffee and being a bitch, and some shit about vampires. MARINE GUNNERY SERGEANTS, he thinks. The renewed creaking of the sticker carousel signals Brad’s return, and they walk out of the store and onto the wet brick patio before Nate notices the plastic bag hanging off Brad’s wrist.

“Souvenir?” Nate asks.

“Yeah,” says Brad, and hands it over, shoving his hands in his pockets.

It’s a book of old photographs of San Diego, the glossy kind of paperback they sell at the local CVS and mark up at bookstores.

“Thought you’d appreciate the faux nostalgia one day,” Brad tells him, and for the first time the entire trip Nate is forced into the realization that there’s an actual end date to this—that he’ll go back to DC and only look at these photographs as replacement memories for this time with Brad, times he’s never experienced and places he’s never been to before Brad. He’s suddenly so overwhelmed he can’t coordinate a response.

 

They come up on the stern of the USS Midway, condensation dripping from the lower decks. Some of the hull is visible above the waterline. There’s an element of deja vu about the whole thing, and Nate realizes why: they’re standing in the same position as they did by the USS Barry, Brad at his left, looking out towards the water. He can feel the cold metal rail through his sweatshirt as he leans against it. Brad is standing close, though, cutting off most of the gusts that have picked up.

“Barry was bow first,” says Brad, looking at him. Nate isn’t sure if he said anything aloud, but he probably didn’t have to.

Nate is about to complete the scene, reaching for Brad’s hand hanging over the guardrail, when approaching conversation distracts them. It looks like an NCO and his blond wife, who’s cooing about the supposed beauty of the harbor.

“This would be so beautiful as a wedding venue,” she tells the NCO, clutching his arm.

“In what universe,” Nate starts to say at the same time Brad shoots him a look, and they laugh. The couple doesn’t hear, blissfully unaware.

“Navy,” says Nate, shaking his head.

“Well,” says Brad, withdrawing his hand and leaning forward to get a sideways look at them, “at least he waited until E-4. Whatever that is in squid ranks.”

Nate studies the kid’s face, his posture. “No way. At least E-6.”

“An unmarried, undivorced E-6? That’s almost rare enough to be impossible.”

“Well, what about you?”

Brad grins. “There’s only one me.”

True enough. “How do you know he’s not divorced?”

“Look at him. He still looks like he’s happy to be doing it.”

Nate will concede that, too. Brad interrupts his thoughts: “You don’t approve of the venue? Too plebeian for your tastes, Captain?”

If it’s as painful for Brad to say as it is for Nate to hear, Nate doesn’t know why he’s doing it. But he takes his cue from Brad and plays along.

“Well, where would you have yours?”

Brad laughs. “Right.”

“North County Courthouse sort of deal?”

“A nothing sort of deal.”

Nate remembers the ticket and wants to call Brad on his bluff, but realizes he’s creating some strange false congruence here: maybe there is no bluff. Nate doesn’t know why he’s thinking about marriage, and has the feeling he’s said the wrong thing, made the wrong response, again.

“Well,” he says, “I’m not planning a wedding anytime soon. I hope you aren’t either.”

“No need to worry about buying tuxes for my sake,” returns Brad.

: : :

“Why are you following that car?” Brad asks.

“What?”

“The Tundra,” says Brad, eyes trained on the slightly dented bumper in front of them. “You were doing it earlier, too. This morning.”

“The Tundra was on the road this morning?” Nate asks, baffled. The Tundra is conspicuous in its conformity; the I-5 on the way back to Brad’s is a column of trucks, hulking F-350s and lifted Ram pickups with mega cabs. Earlier today the road was composed mostly of sedans.

Nate glances at Brad. “This same one?”

“No,” says Brad. “But you followed a GMC from LAX until Ventura. Switched lanes, even if the lane was going slower.”

“I don’t know how you noticed that,” says Nate, surprised. “I didn’t even notice it.”

“I know,” says Brad. “That’s why I’m asking.”

This is another camouflaged argument begging to be brought into existence. Nate doesn’t take the bait, but doesn’t let go of it either. “I wasn’t even aware. Guess you just get used to what’s in front of you on long stretches of road.”

Brad appears to consider this, but his silence only edges Nate into apprehensive contemplation. He _was_ following the Tundra, memorizing its braking patterns and the current of the freeway, the ebb and flow of cars and red lights. It was comforting, practical; familiarity with the vehicle in front of him allowed him to focus on other things—as he concentrated on following the Tundra, he expanded his awareness to the other lanes, the glittering cars miles in front of him on the flat asphalt. Now, distracted, he’s conscious of the rigid line of Brad’s shoulders, his left elbow on the center console.

He’s driven with Brad before; he wonders if he did this on the snow-covered parkways and streets of Maryland, without this desert backdrop framing the scene.

“I don’t know why I’m following it,” he says finally, and changes lanes, gradually merging right until he gets to the shoulder and pulls into the empty lookout point parking lot, hitting the emergency lights.

He gets out, meaning to switch positions with Brad, but instead ends up standing.

“I don’t know why you’re doing this,” Nate says when he hears the door sensor beep and gravel shift behind him. He keeps his voice carefully empty, though it doesn’t take much effort.

“I’m not doing anything, Nate.” Brad comes around to stand beside him. A hand slips under the collar of Nate’s shirt, temperate pressure that moves down to his shoulder and then folds him into Brad’s arms. It’s less of an embrace than it is a careful restraint.

“Fuck,” Nate says into his chest. “Can we not do this anymore?”

Brad stiffens around him, and Nate grips him tighter and clarifies, “The shit with—saying this shit. Just tell me what you mean. I don’t know why I was fucking following that car. I get it has to do something with Iraq. Just—Christ, I don’t have to know why.”

Brad is still silent.

“I feel like—Jesus, I feel like I’m constantly being picked apart for every fucking thing I do or don’t do. By you,” Nate clarifies, still muttering into Brad’s shirt.

“You’re projecting,” Brad tells him from above. “You know I have faith in you.”

“That doesn’t mean there’s no doubt.”

“No,” Brad agrees. “But it means I respect you enough to trust you.”

“Then what changed?” Nate asks, trying to keep the pleading out of his voice. He worms out of Brad’s arms; he can’t continue this without eye contact. “I know it was different. I know, but I don’t know why. It should be easier, but it isn’t.”

“I don’t know,” Brad says finally, looking lost. “It wasn’t like this before.” Nate doesn’t know how to hear it in any way other than the one he does: _you_ weren’t like this before.

“Yeah, well,” he says. He was willing to accept that he had changed, but Jesus Christ, at this point he doesn’t know what Brad sees in him anymore. He doesn’t even know what _before_ to compare this to. “That’s what happens. What do you want me to do, Brad?” He doesn’t add on: _I’ll do it._ At this point, if Brad doesn’t fucking know that, he’s lost. Or maybe Brad does know it, and that’s where all of this is coming from.

“Do you not want this?” he asks finally. Brad just shakes his head.

“No, you don’t want this, or no, I’m wrong?” says Nate.

“You’re wrong,” says Brad.

Nate spreads his arms out. “Just—give me something here.”

“What happens next?”

It turns out there are some facts Nate can’t work with. Brad only makes it worse: “Can you really see something ahead of this? Whatever this is?”

Realistically, no, Nate can’t. But Nate can’t see a lot of things, it turns out. Nate thought he could see himself in the Marines—that’s probably why he got into it in the first place. And Nate thought he could see himself out of the Marines, which is also probably why he left. Maybe his depth perception isn’t always as astute or accurate as he thought it was, or as far as he could see.

The only thing that comes out is: “Do you want to see me with someone else?”

“I don’t want anything.”

“For once answer a question without turning it around on me.”

“Ask me a question without using the word want.”

Nate would’ve probably forgot his question by now, which he concedes is probably the point of his question, if he hadn’t wanted the answer for so long.

“You’d be fine seeing me with someone else?” he says. “Really?”

Brad is quiet and then says, “A guy?”

Nate doesn’t need or want to lie. “No,” he says. “No, probably not.”

“Me neither,” says Brad, like that’s an adequate answer. “I don’t—Nate, I don’t know what you want.”

The admission is startling in it apparent earnestness, and Nate knows he doesn’t want this to end in a fight. He refrains from qualifying his statement, as he does with basically everything else that touches him and Brad, with an _I don’t know_. Instead, he says, with more confidence than he feels, “I want this to be permanent.”

“You don’t even know what you mean when you say that. You’d never get to see me.”

“Right, as opposed to now,” says Nate.

“You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t want that.”

A car pulls up and a couple steps out a few yards away from them. He knows what he doesn’t want. If this ends here, now, there will never be something like this again. They’ll never sit in a restaurant again, paying with one card, leaving in one car, having an argument and then hopefully going home and learning to sleep in the same bed. It’s sad and vulgar to Nate—the possibility that he might have to leave without this.

Nate wants to take Brad’s hand as it hangs limply, uncertain and suddenly aged, like the rest of Brad, silhouetted in the scattered light from the highway. Brad seems to be implying that he’s satisfied with things the way they were, hanging unspoken between them. He had already experienced that unfortunate epiphany in Arlington.

He decides that if this is going to implode spectacularly and collapse in on itself, that he might as well let it play out. “I don’t know what you thought was so different about me in the desert that you can see this marked difference now. There was just as much bullshit before, except maybe—maybe you felt like we were on the same side of it. I’m not on the side of the bullshit anymore, Brad, I’m just out of the fight. My feelings for you were never centered on the division of allies and enemies in the bullshit. I thought they were, and you thought they were—and even if they fucking were, so what? That’s not what this is now. I don’t know what this is, but I don’t want it to end like this.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Brad says eventually. “I think this is just another battle we’re losing, only I’m on the other side this time.”

Nate doesn’t have an answer to that.

“This,” says Brad, gesturing vaguely, and whether it’s between them or at Nate, Nate can’t tell, “is fucking things up. We should have left things the way they were, no matter how much—no matter,” he finishes.

“Why?” asks Nate. “So we could be having this conversation twenty years later, knowing we can’t do anything about it, wishing we were actually touching instead of telling our wives and kids we’re on a fucking business trip?”

Brad barks a laugh at _wives and kids_. At the heart of it it’s sad.

“Don’t laugh,” says Nate. He’s going to make himself firmly believe that the possibility could be out there for them, that this, if it did end up exploding, wouldn’t ruin him. He knows it’s futile.

“Oh, Jesus,” Nate finally realizes. “You think I’ve changed because you suddenly can’t understand me the way you thought you could? Jesus. Fucking try harder, Brad. I’m fucking trying—I don’t even know if there’s a word for how hard I’m trying. I’m exhausting myself trying.”

Brad starts saying something, and Nate interrupts, anticipating what’s coming next.

“Is this about—the fucking book again? When will you stop letting that define me for you?”

“Jesus Christ,” Brad mutters, passing a hand over his forehead and looking out toward the cars. “This has been eating away at you. Fucking forgive me for saying anything. Believe me, I really and truly regret mentioning it.”

“Then why has it come up, over and over again?”

“I don’t know,” says Brad, and then something in his expression changes. “I—Jesus Christ. The book was a symptom, or reflection, or something, that—we had lost some measure of—I don’t know. The distance. Fuck. I’ve—I told you I put my faith and my trust and everything that fucking kept me alive in you. I don’t know if I can do that again, without you there. I read the fucking book and I didn’t know what to do; you were gone, and far away otherwise, and you’re still constantly there, and now there’s this possibility—this false possibility—and it’s still not working. I don't want to weather something that wasn’t meant to live outside of its original natural life, but I knew I would anyway.”

Brad looks winded. “Not political, then?” is the only thing Nate can say.

“I’m not a fucking idiot,” says Brad.

“Why didn’t you—I don’t know. Say anything?”

“Because I don’t know how.”

Nate finds that’s true for both of them. This has been built on communicating in silences, thoughts that had to be shoved into the few words they managed to pass between them. Here, back in the States—and it’s not just the geography, Nate thinks, it’s here, where their external association with each other, for all official purposes, had ended—it’s impossible to contort a civilian life, separate or together, into the same cracks that their previous life was forced by circumstance to fill. Ever since Iraq, they tried to understand each other with the same scarcity of expression that had gotten by—or away—with in the desert. Maybe Brad thinks this wouldn’t work, wouldn’t function—wouldn’t be as necessary as it was to both of them, as it was outside of a constantly adrenaline-fueled context. Maybe Brad didn’t want to weather that for no reason, but—Nate hopes, Nate really fucking hopes—the reason was and still is that he loved Nate, and would anyway.

“Brad,” he says, slow and calm. “I don’t either. But I told you I loved you. I still do. The reason I thought I liked you so much was because we didn’t have to talk, but it probably serves to remember that we couldn’t, either. I’ve changed, but not in the ways that matter about you. I do want this, I wasn’t bluffing.”

He finally takes Brad's hand, concealed from the anonymous freeway passengers by the Taurus.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” says Brad, though Nate wants to remind him that he lives here. “There are—limitations.”

“I know,” says Nate, nervous. “I’m not blind to them. I just think it’s worth it.”

“I didn’t think about this often,” says Brad, earnest. “But when I did, I had all these ideas, what it would be like.”

“And?” says Nate.

Brad shrugs, and for a brief moment Nate is afraid he will remember forever, Brad looks helpless. “We can’t mistake desire for opportunity.”

When Nate looks at him again, Brad’s eyes are clear but endless, like the blue water of the Pacific under the cliff the day before. Nate’s suddenly thrust back to another time like this, standing and watching traffic in the dark. _It's bizarre_ , he remember mentioning to Brad, more or less. _All of them driving in and out of the city like it's normal_. It’s not the Iraqi highway anymore, but the statement holds true even now, as he hears the hum of motors behind them, out on the I-5. He wants Brad to trust his judgment again.

“When are you leaving?” Brad breaks in, ever the pragmatic.

Nate wants to groan. “Tomorrow. Fuck.”

“That’s another thing,” says Brad. “Then what?”

“We’re not chained to fate, Brad. We can control things.”

“There are certain elements of my life I can’t control,” says Brad. "It’s not a relationship, it’s the promise of one.”

“I’ll keep that promise,” Nate tells him. “I will.”

Brad is silent.

“Brad?”

“You can be assured it won’t be anyone but you,” Brad says finally.

Somehow that’s still not quite it, not exactly what Nate needs to hear.

“You know what Freud said,” Brad says suddenly, or maybe it only seems sudden because they’ve been standing in silence. A muffler coughs as the couple leaves, apparently having had their fill of the ocean.

“What?” asks Nate, wracking his brain for an appropriate line. “That neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity?”

“People who belong together don’t need to be together.”

There’s nothing Nate can say to that. It’s too weighty and at the same time not heavy enough—an admission, and an agreement, that seems to disappear into the air.

: : :

The smell of weed wafts over to them in the breeze, from one of the crackling fires that dot the shoreline. Nate sees the white of Brad’s teeth as he smiles. Nate laughs, thinking of Rick.

The darkness is violet around them; occasional bursts of noise can be heard among the murmur of the groups around the fires and the booming of the surf. Some strains of what sounds like Mick Jagger crooning Beast of Burden filter through the air. It’s cold, but Nate feels the warmth of the car-warmed clothes as they sit by their wetsuits, laid out on a rock. He sees Brad’s hand hanging onto his shirt collar, pulling the same way he used to tug the MOPP suit down away from his neck. The line of RVs behind them is silent, small lights against the black palm trees and the silver of the railroad tracks that glitter in the moonlight.

When Nate tries to write the story out in his head, he can’t help but change details; but he knows this is one of the few memories he won’t forget. When he tries to write the story out, he can’t see a happy ending. He can’t see a fucking ending at all. Somehow, this feels like the last night—the last night on Earth, forever, for the both of them, not just for the two for them together. After this there’s nothing. That scares him too much to think about, and he tucks his hands under himself instead.

He’s grasping, he knows, onto the last things that he can still have to imagine a life with Brad. He thinks of the unsent application in his drawer.

“I got into UCLA,” he says quietly. “Accepted” sounds too much like high school. He can hear his own breathing, and not only because it’s quiet; he always can when he’s lying. There might still be time, if he tried; he doesn’t think he’s flattering himself too much in thinking that they’d like to have him, even past the soft deadline. As soon as he says it, though, he suddenly realizes he’s cemented the end and forced Brad into it, too.

“Oh,” says Brad carefully.

“Yeah,” says Nate. “Surprise.”

“What’s the surprise?” Brad says suddenly, startled.

“Nothing,” says Nate. “Sorry. Just—the acceptance is a surprise.”

Brad leans back against the sandstone and snorts. “Hardly.” There’s a glimmer of the old Brad and Nate, and underneath that, buried deep, Nate can even see when it was Brad and the LT. He rubs his face.

How did he get here? he thinks. The fucking crossroads of his life, making a—or is just another?—life-changing decision. He would have never even applied to UCLA, never mind their great program. It’s not that he ever promised himself that he wouldn’t consider other people when making his life plans, it’s just—it’s just that he never thought he would have to make that consideration. He barely realizes he’s making those life plans right now, the ones that always seemed another degree, another experience, another year away.

Brad voice breaks through. “Just now?”

“What?”

Brad makes a noise. “Did you know about this before you got here?”

“Oh,” says Nate. “Uh, not really. I called them and they confirmed it.”

Brad doesn’t say anything, so Nate fills in lamely: “Yeah.”

He can still do it, submit the application, Nate tells himself, but—he thinks of forcing things into the spaces they aren’t meant to occupy, and stretching them to do the same. He think of Rick’s words, too.

“I don’t want this to be a choice,” Brad tells him, perhaps unnecessarily.

He feels the sand shift beneath their feet and the fabric of the towel bunch up as Brad moves closer to him. It’s too dark to tell exactly where Brad is, but as far as Nate can tell he’s to his left, leaning over him, and he turns towards the sliver of moonlight reflecting against Brad’s watch. There’s a hand on his forehead, reaching out along his hairline.

He takes the hand and presses it against his cheek, moves his lips over Brad’s wrist. He thinks about everything left on the other coast—a job, an apartment, Kate, his parents, _Harvard_ —maybe. It’s what he’s always thought he’s wanted, and it all seems to be outweighed by the weight of Brad’s hand on his forehead. At the end of the day, it’s certainty versus promise. The two just aren’t on the sides Nate wanted them to be. Harvard, or Yale, or any other hallowed hall, it doesn’t matter, is there, solid; Brad will always be here, no matter how long the ‘always’ really is.

“You don’t have to say it,” he whispers.

“Good,” says Brad. The irony suddenly strikes Nate that for the first time in a long time, he thinks they’re back on the same page.

 

Brad stops him once they get back to the parking lot. There’s a hand on his arm, and then Nate’s being walked backwards until he’s pressed up against the car. He hopes it’s theirs, at least, but there’s only two other trucks there. Brad takes the towels from his hands and slings them over the hood, where their wetsuits are already dripping onto the windshield. He takes Nate’s jaw in his hand and presses close.

“Three fucking years,” he says into Nate’s cheek.

Nate’s not sure if it’s a valediction, or a condemnation, or a simple confirmation—just a statement of fact. Brad only seems to be happy, satisfied, when he’s dealing with facts; maybe he did see farther than Nate had, all along, and the facts were there. Nate has always tried to manipulate facts to some advantage, and it hasn’t always worked.

Nate can’t do anything but swallow and close his eyes, turning his face blindly towards Brad’s. He can feel Brad’s five o’clock shadow rasp against his lips, feels the cut the of Brad’s cheekbone, the hollows under his closed eyes and wet eyelashes, the salt on his skin. Nate’s jaw is slack, heavy hands resting on Brad’s belt, as Brad winds an arm around his neck, pressing into him. The car shifts a little on its tires.

Three fucking years, thinks Nate.

“I love you,” he breathes into the space between their mouths. “You should know.” That, at least.

“I do,” says Brad, and kisses him.

: : :

He gives Rick the absurd Kennedy School pennant when he leaves. Rick looks less than teary-eyed and appreciative.

“At least it’s Boston-related,” Nate tells him.

“Won’t be the same without you, you douchebag.”

“You, too,” says Nate, and means it. “I guess you were right about the whole dead-inside thing.”

“Yeah, yeah,” says Rick. “Leave me to wither away in Ballston.”

He pulls Nate into a hug.

“Fuck, man,” says Rick when he lets go, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Ashley’s gonna really miss you.”

Nate laughs. “Ashley doesn’t know my name. Christ, Rick. I think _you_ might actually miss me.”

“Fuck you. I’ll see you at Christmas.”

People who can’t be together, Nate thinks.

: : :   : : :

There’s an email, though not from Brad. Two years from now HBO will make some movie about them, or people HBO wants viewers to believe are them. It’ll probably be good; there’s an equal chance Nate will hate it. Maybe both.

Apparently Rudy will be playing himself, which is enough cause for at least fifteen follow-up emails of laughter, all of which Nate archives in his inbox, like he does with most listserv emails now.

A week later, he’s in Widener, trying to evade scheduling his group project, when he gets a different message.

_You see the shit they’re making about “us” now?_

Nate appreciates the quotation marks, and wonders what to respond until he gets another notification.

_Can’t be worse than what we tried to make of us._

Nate stares at his computer for a little while, leaning back and taking his glasses off. The screen blurs, and he glances at the girl next to him, highlighting furiously.

“Hey,” he says, “you mind watching my stuff for a second?”

“Sorry?” the girl says. Her face softens when she looks up, noticing his sweatshirt. “You went to Dartmouth? Yeah. Sure.”

“Thanks.”

Nate sighs and goes outside with his phone. He needs a break, anyway, and pulls the hood tighter around his neck. It’s snowing; he figures the cold is a good deterrent against any lengthy conversation. Nate presses on the contact, and doubts he’ll get any response. He’s not altogether ready to have any kind of conversation.

“Colbert.”

“God knows I tried,” escapes Nate, startled by the sudden voice when Brad answers. He probably shouldn’t have said that, but the email was churning in his mind as he waited for the voicemail greeting.

“We both tried.”

Nate can concede his initial assessment was a little unfair. “Yeah,” he says. If he’s not lying to himself, he’s still trying, in the thoughts he spares for the whole situation that he’s largely managed to push to the periphery.

“I’d try again,” says Brad, and Nate’s pretty sure those thoughts have invaded his perception of reality.

“What?”

“I’d try again,” Brad repeats.

“Right,” says Nate, trying to stave off panic. “Theoretically.”

Usually Nate would be the one who had to be told that they’d been through this before, but Brad adds, “It’s not the outcome that matters, right? It’s the righteous struggle?”

Nate laughs, telling himself he’s just glad that Brad’s not actually taking it seriously. “That sounds like vintage Nate.”

“Well,” says Brad, “I always did like him.”

“Brad,” Nate warns. After a few seconds of silence, Nate sighs and says, “Don’t say this just because you miss me.”

“I’ve learned that difference,” Brad replies evenly.

“Or because you think you’re—I’m—lonely.”

Brad gracefully ignores this. “We’re leaving soon,” he tells Nate. “11th MEU.”

“Don’t loose lips sink ships?”

Nate can hear Brad shrugging.

“I’d say good luck, but I don’t know with what,” says Nate. “Happy trails?”

Brad laughs. “Right. ‘Til we meet again. I’m back. For now.”

“Cambridge could use some of Oceanside’s 64 degree winter right now.”

A tinge of surprise enters Brad’s tinny voice, the one that Nate has gotten used to and realizes he had never grown out of recognizing, no matter how long he hadn’t heard it. “Figures you’d be there when I’m not.”

“Massachusetts, Brad.”

“Well, that’s significantly closer,” says Brad, like he’s trying to sound relived.

It’s not any less impossible, but it doesn’t seem any more desperate, either. Maybe that’s the point.

“What changed?” he asks Brad instead. He wants to ask: _Me?_

“Nothing,” is Brad’s immediate answer, and Nate feels like he’s stepped onto the same circular track again, but Brad continues, “I guess that’s the point.”

“Oh?” prompts Nate, confused.

He feels a small swell of satisfaction that he can still recognize that the small grunt over the line means Brad is going to say something he doesn’t quite know how to phrase. “Just realized,” says Brad. Nate thinks that’s it when Brad starts again. “Nothing changed. Got up everyday, did the same thing I’ve always done.”

Nate wants to remind him that he chose it. “Which you love,” is what he says.

“Which I love,” Brad agrees. “But even if it doesn’t get old, one day it’s—I don’t know. One day at the end of all this I’ll realize that it was only enough because I decided to make do. Or I was scared.”

When it’s all said and done, the words Nate has wanted to hear all these years don’t even come in the same form he expected them to. They don’t make him cry, or faint, or whatever he thought would happen, either. The last time he’d heard from Brad in anything besides passing gossip from Wynn was Thanksgiving, when Brad had sent him the laconic _Thanks_. Now it’s a week before Christmas.

Nate doesn’t realize he’s been silent for so long when Brad says, “You don’t have to say anything, or confirm, or—reciprocate. Just wanted to tell you you weren’t—alone. In all of that. In any of it.”

Nate finds his thanks are genuine. Still, he says, “Don’t you think that’s a little presumptuous?”

“I don’t know,” says Brad, but Nate can hear his tone shift. “Is it?”

“It could have been,” Nate still hedges, and finally says, “No. It isn’t. Brad—Jesus. Are you serious?”

“I am. I always was. Maybe a little too much, which probably—contributed to things.”

That’s not strictly true. A watery laugh escapes Nate. “Let’s not romanticize the past.”

“There were some good times.”

Nate can imagine his half-smile. “The time I broke down in Arlington or when I almost drowned surfing in Cardiff?”

“This is it,” Brad says. “This is it for me. Or—it isn’t. This isn’t it. Not without you.”

Nate wonders what happens after this conversation. Maybe they’ll both hang up and it’ll go back to the way—or any of the ways—it was before. They won’t speak; or they will, until they don’t. Maybe there’s still time for the wives and kids they talked about before, enough time for another, secondary life that will hang like a film over his memories of Brad. “Doesn’t this seem a little like deja vu to you?” he says finally.

“Do you still love me?” Brad asks suddenly, and it’s such a terse demand that Nate is startled.

“What?” he says, buying time.

“Do you still love me?” Brad repeats.

Nate weighs the question. There’s no harm in answering, at the end of the day; things will remain the same—he’s learned that much—so he simply says, “Yes.”

“Then I have a transfer to Quantico,” says Brad. “When I get back. It’s only an hour away.”

Nate feels the breath catch in his throat, and suddenly he has enough presence of mind to realize, “From DC.”

“Fuck,” says Brad, like he forgot to consider this in his plans. “You won’t be there forever.”

“No,” agrees Nate. “I won’t. No—Brad, are you serious?”

“Yes.”

Nate contemplates this. Brad’s probably always been serious; that much is true. Fuck, thinks Nate. It’s ridiculous how quickly he can vacillate from young to impossibly old, and get stuck somewhere in the middle, like he did on Brad’s parents’ lawn.

“It’s not a promise anymore,” says Brad. “What I said before, about opportunity—fuck it, I was wrong. Desire is opportunity.”

“I know,” says Nate, still staring at a patch of snow across the Yard, thinking about the pink sunset. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Well,” says Brad, and then there’s suddenly noise over the line, and Brad swears. “Nate. I have to go. You don’t have to make the decision now.”

“Jesus,” Nate says, “you couldn’t have picked a better fucking time to call and not get cut off?” _I’ve fucking made it already_ , he’s about to tell Brad, when Brad just says, “I love you,” and hangs up.

 

Nate goes back inside, shivering and wired. He tries to get back to annotating the paper he’s reading, but gives up after half an hour. The interior of Widener is getting blurry and seems oddly greasy after sitting for so long, so he packs everything up and goes to catch the T, but ends up in a booth at Charlie’s Kitchen. It’s empty this close to undergrad break, so he just orders a cup of coffee from the last pot they’re making and watches snow flurry against the basement window near the stairs.

There’s a text from Rick he forgot to answer— _you gonna walk home?_ —like Rick is there with him, or wishes he was. It’s dark and even though he regularly runs the Charles, by BU and over the bridge, he doesn’t feel like going home. Taking the T back will get more and more unappealing as time wears on, but Nate is loath to move. Everywhere he’s been he imagines Brad with him—imagines getting two coffees, sitting side by side at the window like they had at the pizza place in DC, watching K Street from above. Again, he wonders about the whole thing—the whole three years, the whole four days in San Diego, the whole time in Iraq and even before that, when they hadn’t known each other but had felt each other’s presence, in Afghanistan. It’s hard to imagine that Brad was afraid Nate didn’t love him enough or wouldn’t do enough. Maybe Brad though it was too much. Maybe it was, given the circumstances—the magnitude of experience shared together. Nate wasn’t trying to put the uniform back on, and—like most people, he thinks—he can barely recognize the uniform on himself, the same person that wore the uniform years ago. The phrase, too, is foreign— _years_ ago. He still refers to the time in the singular, as though it was only last fall that he was thinking about leaving, and only months before that he was running exercises in Quantico.

Maybe he hadn’t yet processed Iraq—maybe he had only compartmentalized it, filed it away for future contemplation, at a better point, some time it would be more apposite, and funneled what was manageable into the book. If that was manageable, he thinks, he’s not sure he wants to go much further under the surface.

But that can’t explain the hold on Brad that he still has. Maybe he didn’t and won’t ever understand what makes two people love each other, but he’s pretty sure he knows what keeps them together. The Freud quote comes to mind, even beyond the general unlikely possibility that Brad read Freud.

He buys a cannoli for no particular reason and ventures out to catch the T back. It’s a longer walk from Haymarket back to his apartment, and Nate pulls his hood up, fur lining catching moisture. Another church, he thinks, passing St. Leonard’s, another monument, another church courtyard. Another job, eventually. Another relationship, maybe. It all seems to pale before the specter of Brad. Maybe, he thinks hopefully, it’s the other way around—maybe Brad was the momentous event he didn’t know how to come to grips with, and that Iraq had been resolved as an experience, and had ceased to inform the thoughts and decisions he made everyday. Maybe it really was, as he thought all those years ago in his quiet apartment in DC, just Brad. Maybe that was all there is and always was, and it was still there, and therefore more terrifying than the memories that played out in his nightly theater.

He’s startled by a muted flash of light from behind a lace-curtained window—a neighbor watching the highlights from the Bruins game the Suffolk kids on the other side of the street were coming home from.

 

When Nate gets back to his apartment, there’s another notification that he checks, perhaps against his better judgment if he wants to get a night of sleep. Before he clicks on it, he wonders about the moral to the whole thing. Wait, and ye shall receive? Whatever, he thinks. Maybe it’s time to stop moralizing. Semper persevere, or whatever Latin-esque nonsense Brad had said to him on the bridge over the Anacostia.

It’s a link to some apartment complex in Stafford, along with:

 _I’d try again. For real, this time. We might fuck up again, but that has to be better than this. If you believe me_.

And below it, with a slightly later timestamp, there’s one more line.

_Maybe loose lips do sink ships. Good night._

After deliberation, Nate writes, _I believe you_. He always has. _I love you_. That, too.


End file.
